So you're about to graduate, and you want to make sure you can still get network access after you graduate, but you're afraid this is going to be one huge hassle. Relax. The biggest problem you'll have is the multitude of choices.
First thing to check is whether you'll be able to get access for free, either through the grad school you're going to, or through your employer. Nearly all universities have network access of some sort, though the accounts will often be on machines that don't look or act quite like the minerva/pantheon account you're used to. Many employers, large and small, now also have net access, though they may well be limited to email, or restricted to access within the organization.
On the other hand, you may be concerned to keep your work mail separate from your personal mail, or you may be working for a company without full access. In that case, you may well want to find a commercial provider. There are many choices. So many, in fact, that it makes choosing between AT&T, MCI, or Sprint for your long-distance service a breeze in comparison.
The first thing to do is to see who serves the area you're going to be living in. If you're staying in New Haven, you could certainly consider keeping your Yale account. The cost for your Minerva account is $100 a year. In addition, if you want to be able to dial in to your account over a phone line (instead of hanging around the terminal clusters), it'll cost $200 a year for dialup access to the account. The total comes out to $300 a year, plus 6% Connecticut sales tax.
The advantage of this is that you'll be using a system you already know, and you'll have technical support from folks you've been dealing with all along. However, while it is competitive, it isn't the cheapest service in the area. On the other hand, you do get what you pay for.
If you're not staying in local dialing range of New Haven, or if you'd like to investigate the possibilities of a commercial service provider, one useful directory of providers can be found atThe List, an Internet Service Provider list from Mecklermedia. They list providers for countries from Argentina to Zambia.
Suppose you don't know where your next move will be. In that case, choose a provider that covers a wide area. Some providers have local dialup numbers from coast to coast. The List gives the area codes and country codes in which each provider has local access numbers, as well as price and contact information.
There's also a list of services that each provider supplies. Here's where the alphabet soup begins. "Shell" simply means a standard Unix account, like that on minerva/Pantheon. "SLIP" (now discontinued at Yale) and "PPP" are services again much like those offered at Yale. Other, more expensive services are often targeted at businesses. "56K" and "T1" are dedicated network lines to your machine; probably not what you'll need for your Performa 636. "WWW" usually means space on their Web server, and sometimes includes services for authoring and maintaining pages.
Some providers, like NETCOM and Pipeline, offer access through their own graphical software. In most cases this software is designed to allow direct access to mail, news, and Web services, without the need for you to interact with a Unix command line at all. This service may be offered either in place of, or in addition to, a regular shell account.
Generally, shell accounts run from $15 to $35 per month, flat rate. Some providers have even lower monthly fees, but have hourly limits, after which you pay by the hour. Watch out for these if you know you'll be using the net a great deal, as some providers do not offer flat rate monthly charges. Getting a low monthly fee with an additional hourly rate is like getting metered local telephone service. It's a great deal if you don't use it much, but if you're going to be on line a lot, it can really get expensive. By comparison, Yale's cost of $300 per year flat-rate works out to be $25 per month.
Finally, a note about online services, like America On-line and Prodigy. Some of these advertise very low monthly rates and talk about Internet services. In many cases, these low monthly rates do not include their hourly fees, and in many cases, the Internet services offered are a limited subset of what are available from real Internet service providers. Also, AOL in particular is known for censorship in its online discussion groups. Online services do offer some advantages, however. They offer some features to their own subscribers in addition to what is available on the Internet, and they often have dialup locations nationwide. However, you should be aware of the differences.
Online services tend to emphasize their own internal offerings, with the Internet as a recent addition (because they've recognized how hot the Internet is, if only as a marketing ploy), while Internet service providers offer connectivity to the Internet as their only, or primary service. If what you're interested in is Internet access, get it from an Internet service provider. If you want some of the services a company like GEnie or CompuServe can provide, look into the offerings of an online service.
One of the best features of The List used to be a user-supplied rating service, where each of the providers was rated by users of the Web. Unfortunately, they had to remove this feature when some ISPs were found posting abuse about their competitors. They recommend checking the newsgroup alt.internet.services for information on providers. Again, there's no way to tell if someone's actually posting garbage, but that's always been a feature of Usenet.
As a quick glance at The List will reveal, there's no shortage of Internet service providers. In the coming years, there's likely to be a shakeout, with many small providers being acquired or going out of business. AT&T has recently announced their intention to start providing Internet service, with an offer of free service for the first year for their current long distance customers. If you're one of them, you may want to contact AT&T to see what the offer's going to be like. For now, though, there are a multitude of options. Getting net access is easy, and can only get easier as the industry matures.
Leon Marr (leon.marr@yale.edu) is a consultant at the Internet Information Center (IIC).
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