Today is our second look at the Internet, and today we're going to look at the first part of how we actually gain access to it.

From our previous analogy, we compared the Internet to a road network. Well, in order to understand how Internet access works, let's consider for a moment two different jobs and assume that there is no other way for you to use the road network.

Consider that there is one person responsible for your garage and chauffeuring you around, for making sure that all the facilities you require to keep your car working are available to you and for ensuring that your car works, someone to drive your car (because in this analogy you cannot drive your car because you do not have the appropriate abilities). Consider that without someone to do these for you, the road, no matter how sophisticated and free to use, might as well not exist if you do not have a garage-person/chauffeur.

The second job is that of providing all the road-management functions, such as traffic lights, road-markings, road-signs, maps, cross-walks, roundabouts, and for generally ensuring that the upkeep of the road-system is carefully managed, and traffic hotspots are addressed (maybe we cannot follow this part of the analogy here in Bermuda ? ha!).

Now let's consider these in terms of the internet. There are two types of companies that you require in order to gain access to the Internet: Internet Service Provider (ISP) and a telecommunications company.

In terms of our analogy, let's consider the garage-person/chauffeur as your ISP ? they make all the bits work to ensure your PC can gain access to the Internet. They host your e-mail and (if you have them) your web pages, they provide the "garage-door" that connects you to the road network (i.e. the telephone number you dial or the DSL details you were given for your access), they police your garage, responsible for ensuring unwanted people do not gain access and the provide lock and key for your garage (i.e. firewall, spam and anti-virus protection etc). They will drive you around the Internet ? providing the name-resolution functions required in order, for example, bbc.co.uk to actually end up with your web-browser connected to the correct website.

The second part of our analogy provides your road management and that would be your telecommunications company, providing all the appropriate resources to ensure that you are routed correctly across the Island, in the most efficient, shortest possible route.

As with the chauffeur and road-maintenance company, one is useless without the other. Road management would not be required if drivers did not use them and drivers would not be required if roads were not there. To further complicate things for us, some companies offer both facilities, but do not be confused ? they are one company but they are offering two different parts of the puzzle to make things work for us. In order to gain access to the Internet, we need to have a telecommunications provider and an Internet Service Provider. Mostly, here in Bermuda, the telecommunications provision ? at least for earthlings ? is provided by BTC. There are two main types of connection: dial-up and DSL (or broadband).

Dial-up makes use of existing telephone technology ? technology that has been with us for a while. It utilises a modem (which you should recall, we have covered in the past). A modem does a translation job, "MOD"-ulating the information you type into your keyboard so it can be sent over a telephone line, and "DEM"-odulating it at the other end (hence MODEM). This technology is now old and not very fast for today's end-users who want to watch videos and listen to music over the Internet. However, there are still quite a large installed population of dial-up users, despite its slowness and I don't see it disappearing anytime soon. One additional drawback here is that when you are connected to the Internet, your phone will be engaged if someone should try to call you.

Next time we're going to look at the second main type of Internet access, and finish with this topic by looking at where Internet access is going for the future.