How to Choose an ISP in Europe

A Swiss study reveals the state of Europe's Internet infrastructure.

Valerie Thompson

How did you choose your local Internet service provider (ISP)? If you live in a rural area, there might be just one ISP offering local access. If you live in one of Europe's cities, however, you will very likely find several offers with different prices and access rates. In a major city such as Frankfurt, for example, you will find about 10 ISPs, and in Zurich more than 15 of them.

But it's not just price that makes for a quality ISP. Especially for businesses, it's important to know which routes the data packets travel. In other words, you n eed to understand the regional Internet infrastructure to which your ISP connects.

A new study called "Featuring the European Internet: CyberRoadMaps" charts how Europe's nearly 300 ISPs are interconnected and how they link to the backbone providers. The report was written by EuroInternet, a consulting company based in Bern, Switzerland, and the European Electronic Messaging Association. EuroInternet also measured the performance of ISPs by counting the number of times packets had to be shunted from one network to another until they found their destination and the actual time it took for a packet to complete a return journey. Both figures are shown in the "CyberRoadMaps" report.

The results were confirmed by more than 40 percent of the ISPs. However, you have to keep in mind that the journey times are nevertheless only approximate because of the variable data traffic on the Internet, says Jim Romaguera of EuroInternet. You can check out CyberRoadMaps at http://www.marktplatz.ch/ eurointernet. This month EuroInternet is expected to publish CyberRoadMaps for the U.S., Japan, and Australia.

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CyberAutobahns

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Number of ISPs in Europe.