Sorry, just read your last couple of lines over again.
Basically you have to pay someone for a connection to the internet.
Think of it like a highway being the internet. You need access to the highway . You can choose road A(dial up), road B(dsl) or road C(cable).
All roads lead to the hiway but all have different tolls on them. (usually dial up is the slowest and the cheapest)
Now your on the road, your going to have to park the car somewhere where you and any passengers can find it. So you pick a name for your parking spot like Roz's parking spot. The spot is free and now everyone knows where to meet later to go back home.
The road is a toll road no matter what. (internet access)
The parking space is free. (your internet address and email ie.
roz@aol.com or getting the aol opening screen and news)
I hope this made things clearer, I used the same analogy for my Mom and she sort of glazed over trying to figure out which hiway I was talking about.