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Technology Stocks : America On-Line (AOL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PLeaps who wrote (930)	1/2/1999 7:48:00 PM
From: Sowbug	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 41369

What exactly does a direct connect to the net mean? Means less than it used to mean. Back in the day, cool people had their own IP address (e.g., 192.168.0.1) that meant their computer could always be reached at that Internet address. Like if you were a professor at a university, you'd have a fixed IP address and a constant, fast connection to the Internet. In fact, long ago (circa pre-1990), this was pretty much the only way anybody was connected to the Internet. And if you had an IP address and TCP/IP stack on your computer, then any network program could access the Internet. Then various serial-line protocols became popular to allow people to connect to the Internet via phone lines. PPP is the most popular now. You'd usually get a "dynamically allocated" IP address, meaning that each time you connected with your modem, you'd get a different address from the pool of addresses allocated to your school/work/ISP/whatever. Lots of people have this kind of connection. PPP translates "phone-ese" into "TCP/IP-ese" so that TCP/IP can work on your computer, so you can still use all those great network programs. AOL is different. Initially, they had only dialup connections with some weird proprietary protocol -- not PPP, not TCP/IP. So you could connect just fine to AOL, and they might ship some sort of web browser or chat program with AOL that let you do certain Internet-related things, but if you wanted to use a different program that required TCP/IP, too bad. More recently, AOL has changed. The newer versions appear to run on some sort of serial link to TCP/IP, meaning that AOL is actually just another TCP/IP client. In fact, it appears that if you're online with AOL and try running some other TCP/IP program (ftp, ping, telnet) it will work, but very slowly. That's the catch: the TCP/IP connection that AOL provides works ok with AOL, but sucks compared to your usual basic PPP connection. But the benefit to AOL is that they can use the leverage of the existing Internet infrastructure -- so people at work, for example, with fast Internet connections can connect to AOL without having to dial in with a phone line. So Quake (a classic example of a game that requires TCP/IP) will run over AOL, but you'll get killed all the time because the lag is so high.

To: PLeaps who wrote (930)	1/2/1999 8:27:00 PM
From: William S Padgett	Respond to of 41369

To use the newest stuff that requires a ppp connection with address needed I don't seem to be able to get AOL to do that by itself. When I connect with sprynet I get an address and then load any browser/mail client/pointcast network/etc. If I go through AOL it seems the AOL network is partially blocking somethings. When I used MSN years ago..you chose on connection if you wanted to go to MSN or make a PPP connection to the internet. The PPP connection is what the more techy people seem to want, but a presented community seems to be what the newbies want. I hadn't heard AOL allowing PPP connections. To me that means they can co-op Mindspring/Earthlink/etc pretty much at no cost to catch the more technical savvy users since they already have the dialin connections available. I personally would like to get access to AOL but need that PPP connection. 19.95 for Sprynet and 9.95 for AOL bring your own ISP is too expensive for me. But if they were to say 22-25 bucks and you can PPP or enter AOL community I would go for it. Starting to develop the ultimate portal...catch the eyeballs connecting to PPP or into the AOL site. I think this will add old internet users who habve gone elsewhere, as well as continue their normal newbie strength. Remember this was a cancellation phone call with the rep trying to convince me to stay....but I can't imagine she outright would lie to me that it was in beta.