What is an ISP? Internet service providers explained

The basics

An ISP — Internet Service Provider — is the company that gives you access to the internet. When you pay a monthly bill for home internet or mobile data, you're paying an ISP. They own or lease the physical infrastructure (cables, fiber, cell towers) that carries your traffic from your home or phone out to the wider internet, and back. Without an ISP, your devices would have no path to anything online.

What an ISP actually does

Think of the ISP as the on-ramp to the internet's highway system:

• Connects you physically — via fiber, cable, DSL, fixed wireless, satellite, or a mobile network.
• Assigns your public IP address — the address the rest of the internet sees you as. (This is why a tool can show you your ISP: your IP is registered to their network — see What is an ASN? for how that mapping works.)
• Routes your traffic — passing your requests toward their destination and bringing responses back.
• Provides supporting services — like DNS resolution (translating domain names to addresses), and sometimes email, Wi-Fi equipment, or TV bundles.

The main types of ISP connection

Not all ISPs deliver the internet the same way, and the method largely determines your speed and reliability:

• Fiber — data over light through glass cables. The fastest and most reliable, with strong upload speeds, where available.
• Cable — over the same coaxial lines as cable TV. Fast downloads, common, but upload is often much lower and speeds can dip when the neighborhood is busy.
• DSL — over telephone lines. Widely available but slower; being phased out in many areas.
• Fixed wireless / 5G home internet — internet beamed to an antenna at your home. Increasingly competitive.
• Satellite — available almost anywhere, but historically higher latency (newer low-orbit services have improved this).
• Mobile — your cellular carrier is also an ISP for your phone's data.

What your ISP can see (the honest part)

This is worth being straight about, because it's often misunderstood:

• Your ISP can see which sites you connect to (the domains), since your traffic routes through them and they often handle your DNS. Most modern sites use HTTPS encryption, so they generally can't see the specific content or pages within a site — but the destinations, timing, and volume are visible to them.
• Your ISP assigns and knows your IP address, and ties it to your account — which is the one piece of information that can connect online activity back to a real subscriber (something they don't share without legal process).

This is exactly why some people use a VPN: it encrypts traffic between you and the VPN server, so your ISP sees only that you're connected to a VPN, not which sites you're visiting. (See How to hide your IP address for the honest version of what a VPN does and doesn't protect.)

How to choose or compare an ISP

A few things that matter more than the headline speed:

• What's actually available at your address — ISP options are location-dependent; fiber may exist on one street and not the next.
• Upload speed, not just download — important if you work from home, video call, or upload often.
• Real-world reliability — local reviews and outage history often matter more than the advertised maximum.
• Data caps and contract terms — some plans throttle or charge after a data limit, or raise prices after a promo period.
• Equipment — whether you must rent their router/modem or can use your own.

See your ISP and connection details

You can see which ISP your current connection belongs to — along with your public IP and estimated location — instantly at the top of GetNetStats, nothing stored, no sign-up. To see the network identity behind it (the ASN and operator), use the ASN & Routing tool.