guide-to-isp.com

Most people fail to realize that ISP’s have security firewalls in place similar to what most search engines use to prevent harmful content and hackers from gaining control of their networks. The internet is actually a huge inter-connected web on networks, linked logically as well as physically through cables that serves countries and territories all over the globe. These companies are large though they rarely make the headlines for they do safeguard their equipment and the land-based cables that links the networks together. Some countries are linked by several redundant fiber optic cables and some even have satellite-based systems serving as stand-by links in the event of a system wide-outage. Continue reading ‘ISP Filtering – Saving you the Trouble’ »

Australia is again trying to go on a country-wide broadband access plan which would unite the country and allow full access to the internet where ever you may be in the land down under. The government has refused many offers from private companies to develop and put the necessary infrastructure in place for the project is to be a national one. The costs are staggering but today’s world of WiFi and WiMax would surely allow more people internet access as well as less infrastructure to cover the whole country. The US is also on a move to do the same, taking internet access to rural America but these are plans that may have to wait, till the recession passes and people start spending and bringing in cash to businesses. Continue reading ‘Country-Wide Internet’ »

With Congress creating the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a group of ISPs, the WISPA, or the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, is looking to Congress to push for funding to connect parts of rural America to the world wide web.

A significant number of rural communities in America do not enjoy internet access, mostly due to logistic concerns and the cost of installing the equipment and facilities for them to connect to the net.

But through the new bill, WISPA is looking to Congress to give federal grants to ISPs with good track records so that internet facilities can be installed in these communities. WISPA is expecting that in the introduction of the internet to these places will also help user in added opportunities as well as boosted economic growth and better delivery of public services and utilities.

The Recording Industry Association of America or the RIAA has a hard time dealing with pirates, and now they’re asking for ISPs to help them out. After suing a lot of people for sharing music online, they have finally seen the light and admitted that this procedure will never work.

Under the new plan, copyright owners will send infringement notices to ISPs, who will in turn notify their users — and possibly sanction them if they don’t respond to numerous messages.

Although pending litigation will continue, the recording industry agreed to stop new lawsuits after working with Andrew Cuomo, New York’s attorney general, and unidentified ISPs throughout the fall. Under the new plan, copyright owners will send infringement notices to ISPs, who will in turn notify their users — and possibly sanction them if they don’t respond to numerous messages.

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Comcast.net, owned by the Comcast Corporation which is the largest cable tv company and second largest internet service provider in the USA, was hacked for several hours last Wednesday, May 29. The hackers left a cryptic message on the site saying that they had “RoXed” Comcast. Spokeswoman of Comcast, Jennifer Khoury, stated late Thursday morning that the problem was solved but some Comcast users were still unable to access their accounts. Khoury explained that the hackers seem to have seized control of the Comcast.net domain name at registrar network solutions and had it redirected to other servers.

As piracy booms all over the Internet, are Internet Service Providers the key to stopping this activity? Considering that ISPs are supposedly seen as an open highway for anyone to traverse through, how would users feel when they suddenly encounter an ISP traffic cop?

There was a taste of this case last year when ComCast was accused by their customers of allegedly limiting Bit torrent downloads. What more, if this suddenly becomes the norm? It seems that the industry leaders at the Consumer Electronics Show were interested.

Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, who has led the company’s fights against companies like YouTube for the last three years, clearly doesn’t have much tolerance for that line of thinking.

“The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming. That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status,” he said. “The question is how we collectively collaborate to address this.”

What does 2008 hold for the Internet and its denizens? Only time will tell.

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