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Advanced
How To Guide
Choosing an ISP and a Telecommunication Method
Reliability and security.
Certain connection options pose much greater reliability
and security issues than others. Some companies may
even use a mixture of telecommunication options to ensure
reliability. For example, although a leased line is
traditionally 'up' over 99% of the time, a company may
still have an ISDN line as backup for continuous access
to their web-site.
Email services
For many businesses email is the most important Internet application. It allows for cheap and fast communication
particularly when dealing with people overseas.
If your company already has a LAN it is relatively straightforward
to provide each employee with an email address from
your domain name (see below for more details on domain
names). Your ISP should be able to handle the management
of your domain so that all mail for your company goes
to your ISP. It remains in your mailbox until your mail
server connects and then distributes it to the relevant
people in your company.
As well as these basic email services your ISP may provide
other value-added services. Web-based access to your
mail means that your staff can check their mail from
any PC that has an Internet connection and a web browser,
this is particularly useful if they are on the road
a lot.
Domain name registration
A domain is your company's address on the Internet such
as abccompany.ie or abccompany.com. To get a domain
name you will need to register with the relevant Internet Registry. For Irish domains the registry is IEDR (www.domainregistry.ie).
Your ISP will be able to deal with them to register
your domain. You should check with your ISP that you
would be able to transfer management of the domain if
you decide to no longer use their services. You should
also ensure that you are the registered owner of the
domain and not your ISP.
If you are serious about doing business on the Internet you will want to register your own domain name. You
should also consider registering domains for any trademarks
or brands that are associated with your company.
There is a charge for every domain name registration.
Also, registration now tends to be more bureaucratic
than before in that formal company documentation is
required before the domain name is approved. However,
this does tend to counteract certain 'entrepreneurs'
who try to register a well-known company name or brand
name and then try to sell it back to the actual company.
Hosting
No matter what kind of account you sign up for with
an ISP, you should receive some free web space - generally
between 5 and 10MB. This may be suitable if you just
plan to establish a small-scale site to provide information
on your company. For anything more advanced such as
an e-commerce or database driven site you will need
to host your website on your own company web server
or with specialist web farm service provider. . This
means that the server your site runs off is located
in the ISP's web farm and they look after the day-to-day
management of it. Your site benefits from your ISP's
high-speed connections to the Internet . If your company
decided to have the web server located in the company
offices, you would have to invest in expensive infrastructure
such as leased lines from the ISP to the company site.
You would also have to work about issues such security,
redundancy, disaster recovery and so on. However, you
should ask your ISP if it has multiple redundant connections
to the Internet backbone. This ensures that even if
one connection goes down your website will still be
available on the Internet . The electricity supply to
the hosting centre should also be redundant with a generator
and un-interruptible power supply (UPS) ready to kick
in if there is a problem.
It is important that your ISP regularly backs up the
data from your site, particularly if you are taking
customer orders or other important data. These tape
backups should be stored off site in a secure location
and should be tested on a regular basis to ensure their
integrity.
During the Internet boom a large number of Internet data centres, which specialise in hosting, were set
up in Ireland. Many of these are now operating well
below capacity so if you are willing to shop around
you should be able to get a good price. Some Irish sites
are hosted in the US, where there is more competition
and prices are even lower.
A data centre should have extremely high levels of physical
security through the use of security guards, cameras,
sensors and alarms. If you are able to enter your ISP's
data centre without being challenged to identify yourself
you should ask questions about their security.
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