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, 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 domain name at registrar network solutions and had it redirected to other servers.
A small scale broadband internet service provider targeting a single subdivision or neighborhood is the Neighborhood Internet Service Providers (NISP). Often using rooftop antennas, they are built to provide internet to residents in the community.
It is advantageous as it can easily cost less than the traditional DSL and cable lines with a right number of subscribers. To monitor the quality of service and maintain network integrity, a local network engineer is needed.
Second level ISP is a type of anonymous internet access providers which gives a secure and anonymous internet access using two main technologies: Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and SSH tunnel or port forwarding.
Since most ISPS now log all incoming and outgoing data including upload and downloads, email and files transferred and even passwords, some deemed it as violating the right to privacy. Some of the personal privacy reasons are: to access anonymously financial institutions and online casinos, to bypass any kind of internet censorship and to anonymize internet activities. Meanwhile, business reasons are: to have an all-in-one secure remote access to the company’s computers, protect employees while on travel and protect the company from government intrusions or competitors.
With anything that is good comes the bad side and prepaid internet is no exception. Here is a list of the disadvantages of prepaid internet:
1. It is slow and not up to par with broadband or dsl connection. Its standard dial-up speed is only 56kbps making it painfully slow to view images or stream music or videos.
2. When you run out of prepaid internet, you need to buy another card or recharge your account or else you will not be able to continue with whatever you are doing. This is hard especially if there is only little time left in a file you are downloading.
3. Forgetting or losing your access number is another big problem. Once it is gone, you will not be able to use the card anymore.
4. It is not economical if you are a heavy internet user. A montly plan is more advisable than using prepaid cards.
Now that you know what prepaid internet is, here is a list of its advantages:
1.) Prepaid internet is most suited for a light internet user – one who occasionally just logs in to check the email or the weather.
2.) It is also helpful for travelers as all you need is a phone line to access the internet. Wherever you may be, you can easily access the internet.
3.) It is also good for people with credit problems as you get to monitor and budget how much you will spend on minutes to surf the internet.
4.) Last but not the least, it is a good way for parents to monitor and control the internet usage of their child.
Most Internet service providers (ISP) have made it part of their package to change IP. The Internet Protocol address, or the IP address, of a computer is that computer's unique address in the online network. And in offering online security and privacy to its customers, the Internet service providers have gone on to use dynamic IPs instead of static IPs.
In your quest to choose an Internet service provider for your home computer or your office connection, you should consider the type of IP address that the service is providing. The recommended one of the two would by the dynamic IPs.
Let us first be familiar with the two types of IP addresses. The first is the static IP, which is assigned to the computer by the network. This address does not change whenever we connect to the Internet. The settings of your computer will remain the same and intact, allowing the computer to connect to the Internet and get data faster.
In contrast to the static IP address, the dynamic IP address is allocated by a router, and it uses DHCP, or Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. The DHCP allows for the allocation of an IP address to your computer when you connect to the Internet. It picks up the allocated IP address from a pool of IP addresses available, and every time you connect to the Internet you will have a different IP address. Most Internet service providers use this for their customers. Not all, though, and we have to know what kind of address system the Internet service providers are running on.
As stated above, dynamic IPs are the preferred one of the two. They were made to change and go to another computer user, giving another user that IP address. Your IP will also will be a different one the next time you log onto the Internet. It's a change "wheel" going on with dynamic IPs, and it is an advantage for us. The change in IP leads to a hack-proof system, as it will give a hacker or any malicious attacker a hard time to get to your data when your address is always changing.
But, of course, static address is also commonly used. Many businesses prefer to run a static IP because of the data that they want to give to the customers they have visiting their website. There's also the issue of the business employees working in various locations but needing to connect to the company's data. This would require static IP. Among businesses and companies, the static IP running system is much more in demand.
When we are browsing the Internet on our personal time and our personal computer, though, changing or hiding our IP address is important. Our personal files and accounts may be at risk if we have a real and static IP as our online address. This is not the right precaution if we want to protect our online privacy. For us personal users, it is better to choose an Internet service provider with a system to change IP.