Using Linux to access the Internet

We live in an interconnected world. In fact, you're using this interconnectivity in form of the Internet to access this course. Chances are, however, that you're using some other OS to connect to your ISP and read this course. After this lesson, you should be able to connect and browse what's out there in cyberspace using Linux.

On-ramps to the "information superhighway"

I think that the term "information superhighway" is a perfect analogy for the Internet. That's probably why it has become so popular. The superhighway itself is the telephone companies infrastructure - the lines, fiber-optic cables, switches and satellites that bring the hundreds of millions of pages of content to you, including this page. Your computer is like that car on the highway. Your modem or other device that connects you is like the engine of your car. That's why we've written this lesson. If you can't get the engine to work, you're not going anywhere. Linux and other OSes are a bit like the fuel you put in your car. If you have been using Windows, that's like using gasoline. If you switch to Linux, that's different, like jet fuel. You'll have to modify your engine to be able to use it, but you'll go faster in the end.

Types of connections

There are basically three types of connections to the Internet; leased lines, broadband and dial-up connections.

Leased lines are high-speed connections that ISPs use to connect you to the rest of the Internet or big companies use to communicate between parts of their organization and to allow you to connect to them. These are known as T1 and T3 lines in North America and E class lines in Europe. This course will not deal with setting up and Internet connection with these lines. It's a little out of the scope of your average Linux user.

xDSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and cable modem are what is known as "broadband" connections. These services offer 24 hour high-speed connections to the Internet in most cases (unless you shut off your machine, of course). For example, in my area, I have ADSL service. My connection runs at 250 kilobits per second when I am receiving data. To put it in other terms, I can download a 5 megabyte file (like a song) in about 3-4 minutes. This depends a lot on where you're connecting to and other factors, but broadband is the best alternative for home users. Depending on what company is providing you with this service, you can even use this connection to serve your own personal or small business webpage using Linux as a web server. In the xDSL area, you can even opt for higher speeds (up to 2 megabits per second) and have Internet service that rivals much more expensive leased line alternatives. Lately, cable modem is becoming more popular than xDSL, particularly in the United States because the cable companies seem to have gotten on the ball faster to offer consumers high speed connections. With all due respect to telephone companies, there may be, and I suspect there are legitimate technical reasons why a cable connection is essentially cheaper and easier to provide to to consumers. The reasons behind this would go beyond the scope of this lesson, (and I'm not a telecom engineer) so suffice it to say that cable seems to be the way people are going to get high speed connections to the Internet.

Dial-up (standard modem) connections are by far the most popular way of connecting to the Internet. Up until the late-1990's, if you weren't a Fortune 500 company, it was the only way to get on the Internet. This connection type basically consists of using a modem to dial the phone and connect to the Internet Service Provider (ISP). The modem "negotiates" the connection (ie - tells the ISP who you are) using a couple of established network protocols. The best speed you can hope to get out of a dial-up connection is 56 kilobits per second. That is to say, about 5 times slower than the slowest broadband connection.

ISDN - a footnote: A few years ago, in my area at least, the telephone company was trying to sell people on ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) to solve the two main problems with Internet use, namely the slow modem speed and the fact that you couldn't make or receive phone calls while using the Internet. They promised connections of up to 128 kilobits per second (the key words here being up to, using the tactic of car advertisements that say from 9,599 dollars, but in reverse). This has never seemed to have caught on, at least in my area. The few people who I know who had this service (and later dropped it) complained about the speed. What they promised, just couldn't be delivered. At any rate, nobody seems to be talking about it so much anymore.

Let's move on to the next section where we'll show you how to set up the different Internet connection alternatives under Linux.

[Previous] [Next]