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Monday, July 7, 2008

Switching Broadband Suppliers - Getting More Bang For Your Buck - Part One

These days most households have the Internet with most of them getting a DSL line or Broadband for their homes. Broadband suppliers are like electricity suppliers, over the years the range of competitors all vying for your business has grown massively. In a test with one postcode I was able to find seven different broadband suppliers in my area, all offering different packages and extras for different prices depending on however much I wanted to spend per month.

Broadband is provided under contracts similar to Mobile Phone contracts, they tend to be 12 month agreements after which you can carry on with your supplier or make the jump to another, a lot of the time with contracts like this people have an overwhelming feeling of apathy and stick with their current supplier to avoid any hassle, providers rely on this to retain your business and you could get better deals elsewhere if you looked around.

This guide is going to go through what to look for if you have had enough with your current supplier and want to explore pastures new, however if you're happy with your service then it is still worth reading on as you never know you may find an area where you could save money or get a bit extra from your provider.

How fast are we going?

First of all you should consider how fast your connection is at the moment, this can be done by using an online Broadband speed test, these websites get two figures: your upload speed and download speed, the latter normally being considerably larger than the former. It's the download speed which is normally referenced in the adverts and brochures of the speed you can expect when you sign up.

Now the number you get back may be vastly different from the advertised speed, say you signed up for a speedy 8MB speed connection it isn't uncommon for the download speed to actually be less than half of that number. Before you go complaining to your supplier there's no point, whilst they are not exactly clear if you look at the detail it says "up to" before the stated speeds, a nasty trick you'll probably think especially if you never actually get the full fat speed you pay for.

The reason for this is that the distance you are from the local telephone exchange affects the strength of your signal, as well as other factors such as the quality of the cabling in your area, the majority of internet cabling in the UK is still copper wiring which can lose signal strength over distance and time. The UK telecommunication companies such as Virgin Media are trying to get new Fibre-Optic cabling rolled out over the country to reduce the degradation in speed and allow for even faster broadband.

How much power is too much power?

As well as checking how fast your connection is, before you commit to a particular package you should consider how much speed you will actually need, whilst there are 50/month packages offering upwards of 10MB speeds you may find that for your household you won't actually need that much speed and could make a valuable saving by selecting a lower speed.

The majority of UK households only use the Internet to check emails, social networking sites and bid on EBay a little. An entry level connection of 2MB would be more than sufficient for this, it could even handle two or three computers through a wireless router as long as all three aren't being used for prolonged periods of time or for more bandwidth hungry services like file sharing or online gaming.

The higher end connections are more suited to so-called "power users" the type of people who download music and videos a lot as well as people who have lots of machines on their home networks. People who play online games like Internet Poker or World of Warcraft are more likely to need a speedy connection, as well as the growing number of games consoles that connect to the internet like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

By now you should have a good idea of how fast your current connection is (if you already have one) and have a better understanding of what speed you need, at this point you should know whether you need more or less speed and have your first criteria for when you want to look at the many suppliers on comparison sites or when looking at the broadband suppliers brochures. The next part of this guide will cover the actual usage of your Internet, the customer services for when/if your service drops and discuss cheap broadband package deals where you could save money by getting your telephone, TV and Broadband all from one supplier.

If you are looking for cheap broadband whether you have an existing provider or not then you can compare broadband deals online. Also if you are thinking about changing your supplier then check your connection using one of the various broadband speed test websites to see whether you are getting your money's worth.

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How to Troubleshoot Your Internet Connection for DSL or Cable Service

One of the common problems among internet users is testing their internet connection to pinpoint the exact problem. There is a big number of internet users who use DSL, and cable modem service.

You set us your connection the way your ISP (internet service provider)instruct you to. Sometimes, it doesn't work for numerous reasons.

You service is not ready, your hardware in not connected properly, or your ISP is having problems.

Whatever the cause of the problem maybe, there are some diagnostic tools you can use in Windows XP, in order to identify the problem.

If you are not exact in your diagnostic, you will get a good idea at least.

Before we get to the diagnostic tools, let us discuss what is involved in an internet connection.

The information travels over the internet to your computer through your ISP service. This is done through a High speed modem then to a network card installed in your computer.

Your computer is called a host, your service provider will give you the DNS IP address, and you get your login and password. That is all what you have from your ISP.

Sometimes, your internet connection fails, and you want to find out the problem. You may be able to fix it, or at least get some information about the problem to advise your isp for help.

You will start by accessing the command prompt by going in sequence to:

Start menu, program, accessories, then command prompt. A window will open where you type commands from the prompt.

At the command prompt, you type: IPCONFIG. This command will give you the active network connection on your computer. Here is an example:

PPP adapter Copy :

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 68.239.158.45
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 68.239.158.45

The above output was produced when I ran the Ipconfig command on my own computer running Window XP OS, and A DSL connection. The IP address is my computer address assigned by the ISP.

Please note, you can add an option to this command, in order to get more detailed information about your connection. Here is the output, when I ran the same command with the "all" option.

Ipconfig /ALL

PPP adapter Copy :

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-53-45-00-00-00
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 68.239.158.45
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 68.239.158.45
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 151.198.0.39 151.197.0.39 NetBIOS over TCP/IP. . . . . . . . : Disabled

Notice now, the output includes the phisycal address of the network interface card installed in my computer. Also, you see the DNS IP addresses. With the above information, I didn't have any problems.

Supposed ,I disconnect my DSL connection and ran the command again, this is the new result:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :

Notice in this case, where I disconnected my connection, you don't get a DNS server. This tells you that I am not connected to the internet.

Also, notice the IP address starts with 192.168, which is the default address whenever your computer is not connected to the internet.

Another command is the ping command. It will allow to check if a computer is connected to the network and ready to communicate, whether intranet, or internet.

Once you run it,it will sent a packet to the computer specified and gives the time it took for the packet to travel. This is an a output when I tried to ping www.yahoo.com:

C:>ping www.yahoo.com

Pinging www.yahoo.akadns.net [216.109.118.66] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.109.118.66: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=55
Reply from 216.109.118.66: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 216.109.118.66:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 35ms, Maximum = 39ms, Average = 38ms.

That shows that the host was reachable, and connected to the internet.

A very important command is the Nslookup. This will let you check if DNS (domain name server) is working properly. The function of the DNS server is to translate ip addresses to domain name of the networked computer. Here is an example:

C:> nslookup www.yahoo.com
Server: home5.bellatlantic.net
Address: 151.198.0.39

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.yahoo.akadns.net
Addresses: 216.109.118.67
Aliases: www.yahoo.com

So, you enter the name after Nslookup, it will give you IP addresses and vice versa.

In summary, there more commands in Windows Xp, but using the three above commands should give you a good idea about your internet connection problems. You can find where the problem is occurring. Is it your machine, or the ISP.

Thanks,
George Chamoun

For tips about your Windows XP computer, visit our new website: http://www.ResolveWindowsXpProblems.com

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