What is an ISP(Internet Service Provider)?

ISPs provide their clients with Internet access through different technologies.

What is the ISP?

The ISP ( Internet Service Provider ), in computing, is the Internet Service Provider , that is, the company that sells the Internet connection to users.

Thus, the same ISP provides its clients with access to the Web through different means or technologies (DSL or “broadband”, Dial-up, cable modem, GSM, etc.), and in the same country or region they can There are various ISPs, which together constitute a market.

In its early days, the Internet was a technology limited to the university, government and scientific spheres, which required specialized identification and access to use it. But this limited its dimensions, and excluded the general public, increasingly interested in the infinite possibilities of the Web, which is why in the early 1990s a group of private companies decided to offer access points to the network , thus becoming the first commercial ISPs.

Competition between ISPs eventually led to an ever-widening user market and new and faster connection technologies , which allowed for the great information explosion of the Internet, taking it virtually everywhere: cyber-cafes and call shops initially, then to their users’ own homes and finally, as we can see today, the cell phones that they own.

ISP technologies

The main technologies used by ISPs to provide their users with an Internet connection are:

• Dial-up ( dial-up connection) . Connection through the telephone network.
• ADSL (broadband). Connection via an asymmetric digital subscriber line (hence the acronym).
• CATV . Connection via subscription television (cable).
• Mobile phone network . For “smart” cell phones, either UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) or HSDPA (3G technology).
• Wireless network ( WiFi ). Connection by radio waves for computers and cell phones.

How to know my ISP?

In principle, to know our ISP, it would be enough to review the name of the company to which you pay for Internet service , often the same one that provides us with telephone and / or cable television. In case we do not know it, it is possible to access said information through some free web pages that reveal information about the internet protocols that we use.

Some of them are Spyber.com or Ipcheck.org, and you only have to enter your URL address in a window of our browser and wait for the complete information of our connection and computer to be displayed, such as IP address, server, remote port, and ISP. The latter can be called through those acronyms or simply as “Internet Service Provider”.