What Does Internet Service Provider Mean?

Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a business organisation which sells internet access to its clients. Earlier most of the ISP services were managed and run by phone companies. Now-a-days ISP services can be started by anyone provided he has sufficient amount of money and experience. Apart from providing internet access through Dial-up and DSL lines, they also offer other services like Internet Transit, Domain Name, Web Hosting, Colocation etc.

ISPs use a wide range of technologies to allow consumers to connect to their network. For basic "Home Users" connections like Dial-Up, Cable Modem and ISDN are offered. For consumers who run business organisations, connections like DSL, Ethernet, Metro Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and ISDN are offered depending on their usage and speed demands. Just as users purchase internet access from ISP's, ISP's also have to buy rights to the internet from upstream ISP's.