What you need to know about Internet Service Provider (ISP)

An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is the industry term for the company that is able to provide you with access to the Internet, typically from a computer. If you hear someone talking about the Internet and they mention their "provider," they're usually talking about their ISP. Your ISP makes the Internet a possibility. In other words, you can have shiny computer with a built-in modem and could have a router for networking, but without a subscription with an ISP, you won't have a connection to the Internet. 

For the typical homeowner or apartment dweller, the ISP is usually a "cable company" that, in addition or offering a TV subscription, also offers an Internet subscription. You don't get both for the price of one, however. You can get just cable TV or just high-speed Internet, or both. 

An ISP is your gateway to the Internet and everything else you can do online. The second your connection is activated and set up, you'll be able to send emails, go shopping, do research and more. The ISP is the link or conduit between your computer and all the other "servers" on the Internet. You may feel like you're talking to your mom directly through email, but in reality it's more "indirectly." Your e-mail goes from your computer, to the ISP servers, where it's sent along to its destination through other servers on the network. 

Of course, that's its "electronic" path: the transmission is still virtually instantaneous. Every home or organization with Internet access has an ISP. The good news is, we don't all need to have the same provider to communicate with each other and we don't have to pay anything extra to communicate with someone who has a different ISP. Whereas just about anyone can have a website, not everyone can be an ISP. It takes money, infrastructure and a lot of very smart technicians. Your ISP maintains miles of cabling, employs hundreds of technicians and maintains network services for its hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Depending on where you live, you typically have a choice of ISPs.

Types of ISP

In the 1990s, there were three types of ISPs: dial-up services, high-speed Internet (also referred to as "broadband") offered by cable companies, and DSL (Digital Line Subscribers) offered by phone companies. By the end of 2013, dial-up services were rare (even though they were cheap), because they were very slow and the other ISP options were typically readily available and much, much faster.