Surftime, ISDN, ADSL, Broadband, Firewall

• your telephone bill for Internet access exceeds £20/month (which is quite a lot of local calls)
• you are paying for Internet access on a time basis, and have not taken up Anytime or whatever free access all day or evening options
• you want to access movies or sound and want increased speed
• you like the always-on service to avoid the delay of always having to dial the ISP
• you regularly have large files to upload or download
• you feel frightened that you may go away from the computer leaving the connection still running.
• you want to use your single telephone line at the same time as you are surfing.
• you are in an area where broadband is available, and you are within three miles of the telephone exchange. (It is available to 66% of the houses in the UK).

Broadband packages are available from most of the leading ISPs including BT, Freeserve, AOL, Virgin, Pipex, Tiscali, NTL cable, Blue Yonder/Telewest. There are normally bargain offers around. Costs will include:

• a monthly fee, probably £27 and maybe a yearly contract
• the normal line rental and call charges for your telephone
• a broadband modem, say £87
• installation fee at your local exchange say £65
• help if necessary to get your own computer organised (but it is not difficult)
• help desk calls which could be 50p/minute

It is all free 24/7. So it does not matter if you go out and forget to disconnect the line. They tend to cut you off after an hour. If you use the line actively for more than 6 hours they try and make you opt for a higher priced tariff.

It is interesting to see the very high number of possible intrusions that are locked out safely. It is possible to poke about and find out who are the baddies, but it was sufficient to me that they have been stopped.

Does it work? A free test tool is called ShieldsUP on the website of http://www.grc.com and is one of a list of excellent products.
Hit the Test My Shields button to check that hackers will be prevented from getting in.
Hit the Probe My Ports button to check each of the several ports to make sure they do not respond.
It works by finding the quad-numeric ID number currently assigned to your computer and shooting invasive hacks at it, and then reporting whether the hacks are successful. There is a also free program called IP Agent which you can install yourself.

You should also see that you have all the up-to-date security patches on Windows and Internet Explorer. They are issued quite often, probably ten a year. You can get them from http://www.microsoft.com just poke around to find the Download Updates link. The system checks for the version you are using and only gives you the patches you have not yet installed. It could take some time, even with a fast line.

ISDN is not the best buy if you can get ADSL Broadband.

Some people have paid no installation costs. Most ISPs now offer Broadband and have different deals. BTinternet charge £29.99 per month instead of the £33.00 for ISDN, tied to a one year contract. Plus £65 to activate, and £85 for the modem, filters and software pack on a do-it-yourself basis. NTL are currently offering you the box and installation free.

You can simultaneously make phone calls on an analogue "line", which is a separate line in the logical but not the physical sense. These are charged at normal rates, including all the usual Friends and Family etc discounts.

Connection and download are noticeably faster, particularly with software downloads, video, music, and for graphics-rich sites. But at times of heavy traffic things can still be slow in transferring from site to site because you are still affected by the switching speeds in the servers, and the number of transactions they are dealing with. Its only the transfer rates that are improved. There is discussion as to whether the speed falls off if there are many simultaneous users of your line.

ADSL is designed to be connected all the time, in which case you will certainly need Firewall software as discussed above.

BT are being very slow in installing ADSL. And for the many other ISPs who would like to offer the service they are being even slower. In many other countries they seem to have the vast proportion of Internet connections using DSL. In the UK apparently BT cannot even manage it for their own customers, and if buying through another ISP they have long arguments as to whose fault it is when it will not work.

I have NTL cable http://www.ntlhome.com. and the TV basic package of about 80 channels and sound radio, phone line with cheap rate calls, and broadband to the computer. Cost £27 per month, and the installation and hardware was then free on a special deal. The co-ax cable from the street runs to the TV set-top box, and from there a co-ax cable goes to your PC. The deal comes with an Email box, some webspace, and 24/7 internet access. The support helpdesk is not spectacular. I installed ZoneAlarm firewall protection (discussed above).

It is a different way of working. Previously I used to go on line perhaps three times a day to send and pick up my Email, and at the same time to FTP any new files to my websites, and perhaps check the news websites or forums. Now I go onto the Internet whenever I have anything, and again while I am there check the Emails and Forums - perhaps a less efficient use of my time.

I get about 100 spam messages a day, some of which may be viruses but these are kept at bay by Norton. Some of the spam messages are very large, but now this is less of a problem as they come down very quickly.

It is a joy to have video and music come down almost instantly.

You should be able to use your webspace that comes with your access supplier. But the help-desk may not be as good, the facilities you want, like domain names, CGI, and statistics may not be available, and they may forbid commercial use. And the package to give you what you want may be expensive.

If you think you will use a telephone extension cable from the nearest phone socket to your modem, then watch it. The extension cable has to have six wires, not the normal four.