Why do you need a ISP for DSL?

[vinnyracer]

I have a free ISP account with my school.

I just checked with GTE and they offer dsl in my area for about $30 for the cheapest package. They said I also need to get a ISP account with one of their participating ISP (thats like another $20). My school ISP is not on the list.

I wanted to know why do you have to have a ISP for DSL. Why do you need a dial-up account for?

 

[RSI]

I've never heard of that, every cable and isp service I have seen has offered their service both ways.

-RSI

 

[piku]

I know the reason but I just can't put it into words too well, to accept my half-assed attempt until someone else posts

DSL is a feature pretty much. This is the same thing as buying a sattelite dish for your home. Sure you have the dish, but you need a service to provide you with the channels. So GTE is giving you the access to DSL, but you need an ISP to use the feature and provide you with access to the internet. You should check with your school to see if they will be providing DSL access any time soon.

I'm lucky in my case because my telephone company owns the ISP that I use, so they do both

 

[dszd0g]

A DSL ISP has nothing to do with dial-up accounts. If the ISP offers dial-up accounts I'm sure you could get one of those too but it would be entirely separate. Think of it this way, the DSL line you order through your phone company is the line itself. One still needs something on the other end. One can probably purchase just a DSL line through the phone company but it doesn't do any good with out an ISP on the other end. The ISP is responsible for routing your packets to their destination. Your overall Internet experience is largely dependent on how good their backbone is, how much private peering they do (private NAPs), and how good of a connection they have to the public peering points (aka public NAPs i.e. MAE-WEST, MAE-EAST). InterNAP is the truly impressive one. They have desined their network to bypass peering points. They charge a fortune though. From what I've been able to tell they pay as a customer to almost all moderate and larger ISPs in order to bypass the peering points.

 

[Daedalus]

GTE provides the circuit no matter what since you live in their territory. You don't have to use GTE as your ISP but you could.

 

[Jim]

Long story short:

You're buying the bandwidth from the DSL provider. You renting an IP address from the ISP.

End of story

 

[Henry Kuo]

ISP = Internet Service Provider. The word dialup is not in it, so it has nothing to do with dialup. As jim said, it provides you with an IP.

 

[dszd0g]

Jim: Not really.

You're buying bandwidth to the CO (Central Office) from the line provider. You are buying bandwidth out to the net from the ISP. The ISP is the one that actually has to deal with the traffic you send out and receive. It's actually the ISP side that throttles the connection. You will notice that some ISPs offer a 384kb/128kb connection while other ISPs offer a 384kb-1.5mb/128kb connection. It is the ISP not the line provider that in general determines what kind of transfer rates you actually get. Sort of. With DSL the line is often a limiting factor. Generally if you experience high latency to the first hop it is a line issue and not an ISP issue.

 

[NaughtyusMaximus]

The reason that there is no charge from the phone company for dail up access, while there is for DSL is simple. Since dail up access runs on normal telephone lines at the same frequency as voice communication, and uses the same access types (dailing) as regular phone use, the phone company has nothing to do with the connection other than providing you with your phone line. Which, if you have a phone connected, you are already paying for.

With DSL, there is a need for extra equipment at the phone company's end to ensure that your DSL is running at specific frequencies, etc. This is the service that you are paying yoru phone company for.

 

[DaddyG]

In a nutshell, DSL is a data transport. ISP is an Internet Service. A cable modem (plus cable etc) is a transport. The reason that you require both is that you always require a transport and a service.

 

[Xtremist]

dszd0g,

Hmmmm, at least where I live (and with US West's Megabit service), the limiting factor could be either the telco OR your ISP. The DSL router trains to the US West ATM cloud at a certain bandwidth (640down/272up is the lowest connection made). From there your ISP can limit it further. This is because you supposedly only are paying for a 256kbit DSL line, not 640/272. Whether your ISP does this or not is up to them. My ISP throttle's bandwidth on their "Individual" accounts but doesn't on "Business" accounts. So for an extra $20/month I get the extra bandwidth. If you were to upgrade your DSL line with the telco to a 512kbit (512down/544up), then you'd get that bandwidth with my ISP. So it's kinda both of them that play into the equation. I think...