The Internet is now available on a vast range of technologies, some of the latest being mobile phones and pda's. It's now becoming difficult to define what you need to get started on the Internet.

You can simply walk into an Internet Cafe, use a friend's or neighour's access, or your employers or universities network access. Access through a mobile phone is an all in package, which is fairly self explanatory.

But for the vast majority of people, they will be wanting to connect to the Internet from their home and on a personal computer running either Windows or Apple's OS. For them, there is a typical list of requirements, provided below,

• For a broadband account, a stationary UK address.
• Access to a phone line or digital phone line.
• A computer with an operating system that supports networking software.
• A modem, router, network card, or any device which can accept an analog data stream from a phone line and decipher it into digital data for a computer to understand.
• Cables to connect the modem to the phone line and the computer.
• A networking or web browser application to access Internet protocols and services.
• An account on a Internet Service Provider such as Aol and BT.

When an attempt to connect to the Internet is made, there are various connection technologies to choose from, such as,

• Dial-Up
  
• Broadband/DSL/Cable/Wireless
  
• Satellite Broadband
  
• ISDN and T-Line
  
• Wi-fi Hotspot, wireless.

The cheapest and most common type of connection in the UK was dialup. However, broadband has now become the most popular. Once a set number of people, usually in the region of three hundred, sign a petition, then BT will automatically begin the installation process.

The UK broadband infrastructure is set to be upgraded to a 'super fast' network. It will begin with major cities, such as Manchester, which will beable to access speeds of up to 60 megabits a second.

The technology you choose to connect with will have a large impact upon the quality of your connection, the services you can use and the viable applications on offer. Without a good connection speed it is impossible to access popular applications such as BBC's iPlayer, large updates to Windows and other important programmes will take days rather than hours to download.