Bandwidth restriction by the ISP directly is something most U.S. users don’t have to deal with – yet. But other countries have had to deal with monthly bandwidth limitations more or less since broadband was first introduced in their part of the world.

Here in the U.S., Comcast is gunning to impose monthly data restrictions widely, however there’s a problem and a huge one at that. There’s no way for the customer to check what they’ve used. This is like having a car without a fuel gauge or a cell phone without a battery life indicator. Comical? Yes.

Here are some things that are even more comical.

If you use any online banking at all, every time you login to whatever system you use, you’re blasted to “go paperless.” The supposed benefits are that it saves trees. Not true. All it does is save the bank the cost of mailing a bill to you. Regardless of that, what’s the point of going paperless if it puts a draw on your monthly bandwidth restriction that would potentially cost you more?

Want a better example? No problem.

Video web sites like YouTube and Hulu tell everybody that you should watch them instead of regular television. So let’s say you do. Do you have any idea how much draw all that video Flash content has? Quite a bit.

And the best example of all:

Our own President want to make sure that the entire nation has a minimum 10 megabit connectivity speed for all broadband connections. This is a good idea. But then all this means is that you’ll tap your bandwidth limit faster, so it serves no benefit.

It could be that our very own ISPs make this massive speed-increase effort by our own government to drop like a brick by widely imposing bandwidth restrictions. They have a saying in the military to describe this scenario: “Hurry up and wait.”

Do you have a monthly bandwidth limit where you are?

If you do, do you have some sort or metering program that tells you what you’ve used? If so, great! Comcast doesn’t.

Have you found your bandwidth restriction to get in the way of doing things you want to do on the internet?

Let us know by posting a comment.

With ISP’s starting to be more aware of their customer’s rising bandwidth usage, many are imposing restriction. With this, the need for utilities which can help monitor your bandwidth can quite useful. One tool you might find interesting is NetWorx.

The program allows you to monitor all your network connections or a specific network connection (such as Ethernet or PPP) only. The software also features a system of highly customizable visual and sound alerts. You can set it up to alert you when the network connection is down or when some suspicious activity, such as unusually heavy data flow, occurs. It can also automatically disconnect all dialup connections and shut down the system.

For the most part, unless you are a really heavy user which does a lot of downloading or watching videos online, this isn’t something you need to be worried about. However, if you ever do get a warning from your ISP, having a tool to help track and report on your usage can be very valuable.

There are many of us (myself included) who remember the days when dial-up was the only way to get online, and there were two types of ISPs, the Corporate and the Mom n’ Pop.

A few examples from when I was living in Connecticut:

The locals were NECAnet and Cyberzone. The corporates were SNET and TIAC. All of them cost about the same price per month.

(As a small side note before continuing, CompuServe is officially no more. For those interested in ISP history, that’s a good read.)

The links to the ISPs above are all from The Internet Archive because not a single one of them exists any longer. Each was bought out/acquired, shuffled around a few times and either dissolved or merged into a larger ISPs customer base.

I’m sure more than a few of you out there can name off at least three ISPs from the late 1990s/early 2000s that are no more.

As to the question of whether a true Mom n’ Pop ISP still exists, the answer is yes, they do. And wow, did I find a doozy for my example.

BEHOLD… Spitfire Communications

• We’re greeted with a home page that has 3 different fonts and looks like it was designed in 1997. The title of the page is "Home". That’s it.
• The Downloads page lists software that is literally 10 or more years old. You can download AIM 5.1! Or ICQ 2000b!
• On the How Do I? page, every link for modem help is dead.
• Want to pay a bill online? You can’t. The Pay Online page links to a site that’s dead.

If you thought your ISP was behind the times.. well.. I dare you to find one more antiquated than Spitfire.

I’m sure Spitfire is a fine dial-up ISP, but you can’t deny the dinosaur-era site design and plethora of dead links.

This, unfortunately, is how most Mom n’ Pop ISPs are today. Woefully behind the times. Web sites antiquated beyond belief. And they probably accept payments in doubloons for all I know.

Do you use a Mom n’ Pop ISP or know someone that does?

Tell us your tale.

If you are currently a cable/DSL subscriber, you might currently be leasing/renting your equipment from your provider for a monthly charge. If this is the case, why not just buy one?

One thing providers do not want you to know is you can buy both DSL and cable modems relatively cheap. You may hear the “we won’t support it” or “if we change our signal it won’t work” excuse, but for the most part, this is non-sense.

Here are some of Newegg’s listings:

• DSL Modems
• Cable Modems

If you are paying $5 a month or more, these modems will pay for themselves in about a year, so in the long run you can save quite a bit.

If anyone has  done this, please post the modem you use and your ISP to help others out.

If you use a mail client installed on your computer to check your email you always have to configure the incoming and outgoing (SMTP) server. The problem I have run into often is actually finding SMTP server information on some of the ISP’s sites for when I need to do troubleshooting.

Google is your friend in this case as I came across a page which offers a list of common ISP SMTP servers. Another reason I needed this is because I have some customers we provide email for (incoming mail server) who have to send outgoing mail through their ISP (this is very common). Now instead of having to dig through the ISP’s help information, I can just forward them this page and tell them to enter the appropriate server for their ISP. Problem solved.

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be taking a look at something you’re using right now – the ISP. Where did it originate from and who really holds the “keys” to internet connectivity as we know it? You’ll find all this out in this article.

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Anything that gets big over time always starts out small. A classic example of this is the Internet Service Provider, commonly referred to as the ISP.

Bear in mind that the ISP always starts (and usually ends) at the electric company. This may leave you scratching your head thinking, “How can the electric company be the beginning and end of all internet connectivity as we know it?”

Here’s how it all works:

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If you are a customer of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) who is monitoring your bandwidth usage, a useful tool for you is a bandwidth meter. While most of you out there will probably never run into issues with bandwidth limitations, inevitably some of you will. To help watch your usage, check out NetMeter.

NetMeter is a free bandwidth monitoring tool which watches both your upload and download usage. There are lots of options you can configure such as the color and font scheme as well as which network cards you want to watch (in the event you have more than one). Another handy feature is NetMeter can project your anticipated usage which may be attractive for those with limations.

For the most part, this utility is a good tool to have for those concerned about their net usage. Power users may find this an interesting toy to play with as well.

Verizon (for those unaware) is a humongous telecommunications company with a very large presence in the United States. It’s more or less guaranteed that anyone you talk to in the US knows what Verizon is and what they do.

Verizon’s infrastructure is also humongous (obviously). This means they can offer anything to do with telecommunications. So, if you’re the type that uses one company for everything, Verizon can usually do it.

When I first moved to Florida two years ago I decided to go all-Verizon. Why? Because it was easy and they had the lowest price. Furthermore you can combine everything using their “One-Bill” service to make managing services easy.

Or so it would seem. Continued