The purpose of this lab is to research compare current costs for some Internet Access technologies. You have three choices:

1. You can pretend that you are a journalist going overseas who needs an ISP connection;
2. OR an ISP looking for backbone provider;
3. OR a small business looking for an ISP.

1. Researching an overseas ISP. Pretend that you are a journalist about to be sent to cover some trouble spot in the world by a small news organization. You will be there for three months, and expect to send back daily reports. You estimate that each day you and your team will generate 855.36 Megabits of data. (It might include something like 20 pages of text, one minute of voice data, 5 photographs, and 2 minutes of video, all compressed of course.)

   You will not have access to the country's university network connections, and the local Internet Cafe can supply at most a 33,000 bps asynchronous connection. At that slow rate it would take all of your work day just to send your data!

   Your Task is to find an ISP in the country that you think will allow you to transfer your daily reports in a much shorter amount of time, and (if available) to list the startup and monthly costs for the service. Luckily, there is a web site that lists ISPs for most countries of the world that you can use. It's URL is: http://www.thelist.com.

   What you need to collect:

   1. The country you are going to, country code, and, if relevant, province/city/areacode.
   2. The issue you are reporting on, and what parts of it you will want to emphasize.
   3. The name and URLs of two of the ISPs that you looked at; and for each:
      1. how they connect to the rest of the Internet;
      2. the fastest type of connection they offer,
      3. its speed, and,
      4. if available, the setup and monthly costs for that type of connection.
   4. The name of the one that you selected to use, and why you selected it.
   5. How long it would take to transmit your data from the Internet Cafe, and how long it would take with the ISP and service you selected. (If you do not have access to the payload bit rate for the service you select, then use the total bit rate to calculate the transmission time.)
   Note: if you work together, be sure to choose different countries and ISPs for each person.

2. Researching Backbone Providers. You are a growing an ISP. You currently have one T-1 line, but it is filled to capacity Your current backbone provider can give you no more T-1s, so you need to switch. You want to compare three backbone providers for several access speeds. Your goal: For each backbone provider, document the current backbone architecture, and the cost for several access speeds: 4xT-1, fractional T-3, full T-3, and OC-3. Find out which provider will cost the least for each speed for a year. (We are ignoring the cost of internal routers, staffing, etc.)

   Luckily there is a lot of information on them at: http://boardwatch.internet.com/isp/summer99/backbones.html

   You can compare any of the backbone providers listed there. Here are a few that you might select: @Home, AT&T, CRL Network Services, Electric Lightwave, GTE Network Services, MCI/Worldcom - UUNET, Sprint IP Services, Quest/Icon, Winstar/Broadband. However, which three to compare is up to you.

   What to collect. There are several screenfuls on each backbone provider. Each is structured in a similar way.

   1. Look for the architecture in a section called something like: "Current Network Architecture". Document the
      1. current maximum speed, and "OC" or "DS" rating, and
      2. if mentioned, what transport technology they use (e.g., ATM)

   2. Look for access offerings and prices after a the heading: "Business Products". Note down the Installation and Monthly costs for the services above. Calculate the total cost for the first year of service from that provider. Construct a table with the following headings:

          One Year Service Cost
      
       Service  	Mbps		Provider1	Provider2	Provider3
         4xT-1    	 6
       partial T-3	10
         T-3    	45
        OC-3    	155
      
      

   3. Then make a recommendation about which backbone provider is best for each access speed.

3. Researching domestic ISPs. You have a small, but growing web business. Your current ISP only supports V.90 dialup modems. You want to research access methods that have a total bit rate at least twice as fast as a V.90 modem (preferably 1 Mbps or better) and cost less than $1000 per month.
   1. For each row in the table below:
      1. Find two ISPs that supply the same service and calculate a One Year cost (installation + monthly fees) for that service. (You can use different ISPs on each row.)
      2. For services with a "?" in the "Bit Rate" column, fill in the speed that the costs (Sometimes there might be several speeds offered by an ISP.)
   2. Also write a sentence or two defining each access method.
   3. Explain which ISP and access method you would select and why.

   Where to find information: You can use http://thelist.com to find ISPs, or use ISPs that you know about from other sources. Some ones to consider are earthlink.net, lmi.net, pacbell.net, sirius.com.

       One Year Service Cost
   
    Service  	Bit Rate	Provider1/Cost		Provider2/Cost	
   		(Download)
      V.90    	56
      ISDN		? 
      T-1    	1.544
      FrameRelay  	?
      CableModem	?
      xDSL		?
      Wireless	?
   
   

4. For Credit. Send an e-mail message with the answers to for the section you chose to account: c130labs

   Please use the Subject line: CIS 130 (Day or Evening) Lab 6 -- Your Username