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Get the Most Out of Your Broadband

Check your speed: Most of the time, you should be able to connect at 75 percent to 80 percent of the top speed available at your location. But a number of factors can affect speed: With DSL, performance drops as distance increases between your modem and the local phone company office. Cable modem service can slow down as more cable users connect to the Internet in your immediate neighborhood. During peak usage times (such as after-dinner hours), both kinds of service may seem slower because network congestion can overload both your ISP and the Web site you're trying to visit.

Most broadband ISPs deliver residential download rates that range from 256 kilobits per second to 1.5 megabits per second; cable connections are typically faster than DSL. Nearly all ISPs limit the speed at which you can send e-mail or upload files to servers to a greater extent than they restrict download speeds.

If you're not sure what level of service you pay for, check your bill or call your ISP. Next, measure the actual speed between your ISP and your computer. One method is to use your ISP's own speed-testing tool, if it has one (see "Test Your Broadband Speed").

Broadband consultant John Navas recommends hand-timing a download test. Use a stopwatch to time how long it takes to download a 3-megabyte or larger file hosted at your ISP. When the download is done, right-click the file, choose Properties to determine its exact size in bytes, and divide that number by how many seconds it took to get the file. Multiply that result by 10 for a rough estimate of your megabit download speed.

Test several times and average the results. If you consistently get less than half the speed you pay for, a traceroute tool--such as Sam Spade, TraceRoute3D, or VisualRoute--can tell you if the problem originates with your ISP. Traceroute utilities display a bread-crumb trail of the path that data takes from your PC to any other on the Internet, checking how quickly each router responds. If the problem persists, and a traceroute shows a slow router hosted by your ISP, call your provider for repair service.

Shop around: Many DSL providers limit basic account speeds, and charge more for faster connections. This has sparked a price war among the largest providers, which now offer basic, no-frills plans at rates as low as $25 a month. If you only check e-mail and want to surf occasionally, consider a cut-rate DSL account.

Tweak it up: Often, you can can snap sluggish connections out of their torpor by power-cycling your cable or DSL modem (unplug it for a few seconds, then plug it back in) and your home gateway or router (if you use one). But you shouldn't have to power-cycle repeatedly to maintain an acceptable level of performance. Slowdowns can also be the result of incorrect networking settings in your operating system. Out of the box, Windows XP usually handles a broadband connection's high-speed data flow pretty well, but all versions of Windows can benefit from a small tweak to get the best results. Check out the Navas Cable Modem/DSL Tuning Guide for tips.

Use Your Extra Features

Along with the connection itself, your ISP provides other essential Internet services: bonus e-mail addresses, online file storage, software, and more. You may get these services from different providers--AOL, MSN, and Yahoo all partner with broadband ISPs, for example.

Make use of multiple mailboxes: You probably have your e-mail situation in hand, but did you know that many broadband ISPs give you several mailboxes? Most services let you create three to five e-mail addresses for a single account. That lets you separate business from pleasure by using a different address for each purpose. You can even offer the extra mailboxes to family members or coworkers (and shut down mail accounts at other ISPs you might be paying for).

Skip the portal software: Often, a broadband provider will send you an installation disc with software (such as MSN's MSN Explorer) that acts as a portal to the Internet. Most of this software is strictly optional, and in some cases it can be buggy or difficult to use. Though new Internet users may find portal software or home pages useful, old hands will want to stick with their own browsing and interface preferences. As long as you've properly configured your network connection, you probably don't need the additional software (but to be sure, check with your ISP first).

The one possible exception to this eschew-the-provider's-software rule is the Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet dialer that many DSL providers use. Windows XP comes with its own built-in PPPoE support. (For instructions on configuring it, visit Microsoft's site.) You may also be able to use PPPoE settings in your gateway or router, if you have one, instead of PPPoE software.

Learn how to connect from the road: Most ISPs let you check your e-mail through a protected Web page--a nice convenience. On the road, however, it's better to have full Internet access. Major ISPs such as AOL, AT&T, EarthLink, and MSN have a network of dial-up access numbers, but most cable companies and baby-Bell DSL providers don't. Your provider's customer support can tell you if the company provides dial-up access, or any other away-from-home service. Verizon announced earlier this year that its broadband customers can use wireless access points that the company installed throughout Manhattan free of charge. Now that's an ISP trend we can get behind.

Publish or store files online: Just about every large broadband ISP gives its customers some server space to host a Web page and to store files. If you're not using this valuable feature, you should. Do you regularly e-mail photos, or have you sent out an electronic resume? Instead of sending these files as large attachments, you can post them in your Web storage space or page and then e-mail links to them. (See "Step-By-Step" to start learning basic Web site building skills.)

Some services, such as Comcast, grant you as little as 25MB of storage space--enough for a basic Web site and a few documents. Some offer more; Cox Communications, for example, provides 70MB. An anonymous FTP service or online file storage feature lets you host larger files for family, friends, coworkers, or clients. Extra storage can be expensive (as much as $1 per megabyte over the limit, each month), and your ISP won't always alert you when you exceed the limit, so keep close track of what you upload.

Use the news: If you can't find a particular nugget of information on the Web, the next best place to look is Usenet, the ownerless collection of discussions arranged by topic into so-called newsgroups. (If you want information about cable and DSL broadband, for example, check out the comp.dcom.modems.cable and comp.dcom.xdsl groups.)

Almost every provider carries newsgroups, but few carry all of them (there are tens of thousands). Some of the bigger ISPs avoid groups devoted to music, movie, video, and porn attachments. Outside of these groups, which probably account for the bulk of the data flowing through Usenet, thousands more groups are dedicated to every conceivable topic, from user reviews of power tools, organized by manufacturer, to TV show fan clubs. You can check out newsgroups using any copy of Outlook Express, or with a free news reader like Forte's Free Agent.

If you don't see a newsgroup that you used to get through an earlier ISP, ask your new provider to carry it; Comcast, for example, has a newsgroup (attbi.newsgroup.requests) dedicated to such requests. If your ISP still won't carry a newsgroup you want to use, you can sign up for third-party services (such as AllTheNewsgroups.com), which charge a small monthly fee but provide unfettered access to the entire Usenet universe.

Think dynamic: When you sign up for broadband service, you may be given a choice between a dynamic IP address--which will change occasionally--or an unchanging, static IP address. You might think a static IP address is better, because serious Web-heads want them (static IPs make hosting servers easier, for instance) and ISPs often charge extra for the privilege. In many cases, however, even advanced broadband users can take advantage of the less-expensive dynamic address, with no loss of functionality.

If you run file, game, or Web servers through your broadband connection, for example, you may not need to switch to a service offering a static IP address: Sites like DynDNS.org will let you distribute a single, unchanging domain name to users, who can then find you no matter what your IP address is on a given day.

Be Careful Out There

Know your terms of service: A router creates a network of PCs and can connect them all to the Internet. But even though many broadband service contracts specify that you may connect only one PC at a time to the network, as long as you don't invite an ISP representative into your home or office, the provider can do little to determine what is installed behind your router.

If you plan to violate your terms of service and install more than one PC, you're taking a chance. At the very least, don't expect to receive technical support from your broadband provider. At worst, you may lose your service altogether.

But if you want to throw caution to the wind, many routers do offer a useful feature for cloning your MAC interface address, allowing all the PCs within a local area network to appear (to the outside world) as just a single computer.

Use a firewall/router: Most residential broadband services provide a modem, an ethernet cable, and setup instructions--but hardly any information about security. If you don't have a firewall, your computer is a sitting duck. (Visit "Protect Your PC" for firewall reviews.) A router can provide additional protection by preventing unwanted Internet scans from reaching your computer.

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