When we head out to the Internet, there are a large number of activities that happen behind the scenes.

In explaining the following, remember that we are discussing only a small number of these things as I don't want you to lose sight of the fact that there are MANY more of these "hidden" activities occurring.

The Internet within the Northern America continent is a large loop with FIVE points of access entry.

Ponder that fact for a few seconds .......

An ISP (Internet Service Provider) sets up shop with the intent of selling you a monthly subscription to gain access to the Internet.

Okay, that's simple enough in theory.

BUT ..... you didn't ponder the "FIVE points of access issue" above long enough if you didn't stumble on this last point regarding the monthly subscription.

You see, the ISP that you and I purchase our access rights from must purchase THEIR access rights from somebody else and they in turn must purchase THEIRS (typically).

It's the old "bigger fish in the food chain" story again.

[ in case you think I lost sight of your question, I am working on explaining if you can use MSIE while using Bell Atlantic as your ISP ]

Okay - now think of the Internet as a large highway that loops around the continent.

You may travel it any time you'd like, but you must pay a "toll" at the booth as you enter each time.

Rather than monitor and collect on a use basis, you are sold a ticket that is good for one MONTH of access time.

The "agent" from which you purchase this ticket will offer different perks to draw you to their subscription and away from another being offered.

Some of the perks may be extra email boxes, additional hard drive space, permission slips to travel at a faster rate of speed or perhaps extended hours of travel as some actually limit the amount of time you may spend in one month traveling the highway.

Some ISPs may offer a "perk" by attaching a note to your windshield that will NOT allow you to travel to areas which they deem as dangerous or not worthy of travel time.

So, we now have a ticket to gain access to this highway and fire up our virtual vehicle and make our way along the paths of AUTHENTICATION where our credentials are checked to make certain that we may use the ISPs conduit of travel to the Internet.

What occurs now is that you are stopped when you reach the Access Server at your ISP ( via dial-up, cable, ISDN, DSL, T1, T2, T3, < fractal or full pipe > or dedicated 56K ) and asked for a USERNAME and PASSWORD.

If this works out to be correct, then your "connection" is established.

Here is where it gets interesting.

At this point, the ISP draws an IP (internet protocol) number from it's pool and assigns it to YOUR connection.

When using a Dial-Up connection (modem) this is done each time you connect and the IP changes each time, whereas your IP would remain constant with the other types of connection.

This IP address becomes your "house address" and is stamped on EVERYTHING that you send and receive during this connection session.

This "pool" of IP address is SOLD to your ISP from a central administrative database and their identify is unique to this pool of IP numbers.

This is so that when your ISP sends your request for a web site to THEIR service provider, the return packer can find it's way back from the destination to your ISP and then to the connection port which is YOURS and then to your computer where you are sitting.

This could be one or several levels "deep" depending on how far down the food chain your ISP resides.

Okay, now that you have been granted access and acquired an identifying number to keep you unique in your travels along this huge highway, you decide that you will open your "eyes" and look around to see where you are.

WHAT you "see" when you open your "eyes" depends a couple of things.

(1) the BROWSER you are using

(2) the default HOME PAGE for when that browser is initially started or opened.

Most ISPs will send you software which you load and run to make the initial use of their service flawless - at least in intent - HA!

In these situations you will click one button which will gather your username and password and make the connection for you and assign the IP address for this session to your connection.

After this, a default Browser will open and THEIR default Home Page will be displayed.

Now, pretend that you are on that highway with full access rights and a unique IP address to keep track of you and your requests so you will not be sent where somebody ELSE asked to go.

If you didn't have that identifier, then when you asked to go to USAToday, the moving force which pushes your virtual vehicle along, may push MINE instead, or vice versa - BUMMER !

As you sit there looking around your virtual "dashboard" at the different buttons, knobs, levers, gauges and icons stamped here and there, you wish that you had the one from your old virtual vehicle as your were more familiar and comfortable with that one.

Well, you simply fire up that "dashboard" and relax with the familiar surroundings.

Of course in our analogy here, the dashboard is the BROWSER you have open at the moment.

You see, your CONNECTION is still established and your rights and IP address are still intact.

You are simply putting a different template or dashboard in front of you through which you will view your destinations and negotiate to and from these sites along the way.

Your ISP could care less which browser you use as they are selling you the access time.

Now granted, they receive even MORE money from their advertisers if you stay on their web site where the advertisements occur of if you keep their streaming banner running.

This is how the "free" internet access ISPs are paid instead of your monthly fee.

However you give up a LOT of "window real estate" AND performance while their streaming banner adds run.

If you move them from your screen or turn them off your connection is dropped - and rightfully so.

I often open MORE than one browser page at a time so I can jump between sites - particularly when I am doing searches and the database is cranking away.

I can do something meaningful on one while waiting for results on another.

You either double-click and start another occurrence of the browser or typically you can find a "new" selection under <file> on the open browser's command menu.

You could open a Netscape an IE and a NeoPlanet browser and look at the same page on each just to compare the "dashboards" and see how the "view" would look on each.

For the most part, the web sites SHOULD appear the same, however some sites are only written to compliment one browser or another.

The Email situation is the same as for the browser with ONE exception.

If you were to setup three different email "clients", you would typically pull email to THEIR directory.

Let's kick this around a bit.

A client is nothing more than saying "the application" which is running on YOUR computer as opposed to that which is running on the server.

The server email application might be a WindowsNT server or LINUX server email service where yours might be application to pull and push email within Netscape or IE or NeoPlanet or Eudora or any other number of "clients".

In any case, each will have their own "format" by which they create and handle email.

Much like WordPerfect or Write or Word or Notepad wouldn't simply open and read a document from another's format neither will email.

HOWEVER ... they all have a means by which to CONVERT the email from one format to another.

The original, just like with the above word processing example, leaves the source (original) in tact and unaltered in any way.

These conversions will recreate your address books, folder structures and copy existing email messages if you click on the appropriate box as desired.

So, you could setup several email clients AND browsers on your computer and try each to see which one you liked.

You may prefer one browser, but an email client completely unrelated to that browser.

You would simply NOT click on the email associated icon within that browser when you were working.

Better yet, to make certain that the unpreferred email client did NOT pull any email for you, remove the configuration information regarding your email address and such from the client that you won't be using.

There is one EXCEPTION here regarding the email client, that I must caution you about, is that each will save the incoming message into it's own directory structure by default.

So if you pull email today with Eudora and tomorrow with Netscape, the messages will be in two different locations on your hard drive.

That's not a biggie as each will find the email in it's location when you open the client which it was pulled with, but you'd need to remember that you are storing it in different locations.

NO !!!

You do NOT want to configure different email clients to save to the same directory.

Ha - you didn't know I could read your mind did you ?

If you save from different clients to the same directory, then you would have different FORMATS within the same location and that would be a nightmare when you tried to later convert to any one particular client.