In the last Unit we learned a bit about how the Internet came to be. So, here you are at the computer---what now?

First of all, to get onto the Internet, you need to have an ISP (Internet Service Provider). Sometimes that's your local telephone company, sometimes independent services. ISPs are those 43.8 million hosts we talked about last Unit. (Your choice of ISP will determine your address. Example: a local ISP in Kingman is Citizen's Telecomm, and their address is ctaz.com. Therefore, an email address with them would by yourname@ctaz.com)

If you don't know of a local ISP, go to the computer department of your local College and they can tell you. Alternatively, go to a local computer store and ask them. This is an introductory course, so we won't get into the specifics of how to pick an ISP. At the moment, just finding one and getting hooked up will be enough of a chore for you!

If you live in a large city, you can connect to the Web via some of the large services, like AOL, Netcom, and Earthlink (no endorsement intended, they are just big and available!). But if you live in a more rural area, you may be limited in your choices, because the big services don't have local phone numbers to dial to connect to the Net. I hear you saying, "Wait a minute, you told me that the Internet is wires and cables!" But it's also telephone lines, and unless you connect at work through a LAN (local area network), you will have to use a telephone line and a modem (modulator-demodulator) to connect to the Web. (You should have learned a bit about modems when you learned Win95/98, so I will not repeat the information here. If you do not know what a modem is, please check with your local computer store or library.) You want your access telephone number to be a local call.

These days when you buy any computer, it already has a modem, and all you have to do is hook it up to a telephone jack with the cord provided. You're already on the Internet, or you wouldn't be able to access this course! But you'll still need an ISP to connect from home.

When you contact a local ISP, they will give you a piece of software called a browser to view Web sites.

To sum it up, the ISP sells you access to their connection (for a monthly fee, usually), and they give you the software to view the data on the Internet--the rest is up to you!

In the next section we'll discuss browsers, your window to the Web. Please click on Unit 2 Part II - Browsers above to continue.