This chapter attempts to cut through all the confusion about the different methods of getting on the Internet. There are so many types of Internet connections that it is impossible to say one is better than another. This chapter discusses the pros and
cons of all the different options (at least all the ones we can think of). The aim is to give you enough information so that you can knowledgeably make your own determination of which plan is best for your Web site. This chapter focuses on modem and ISDN
connections but also looks at LANs and leased lines.
We also discuss opening an Internet account with a service provider and registering a domain name with the InterNIC.
If you want to establish an Internet connection for the first time, you have probably noticed a dizzying array of choices (and associated buzzwords). We hope you haven't already thrown up your hands in frustration, because now you've come to the right
place.
In order to get around the big problem of how to connect to the Internet, this chapter takes the divide-and-conquer approach. Let's start by considering the many ways which Internet access can be categorized. We are going to concentrate on only the
following criteria, although we recognize that there are probably other criteria that could be considered:
If some of this terminology seems strange, don't worry. We discuss all of these options here. The point is that you are going to see a great deal of overlap between the different ways of classifying Internet access. For example, whether you choose a
dial-up connection or a dedicated line will also depend on (or you could say dictate) your choice of hardware. Let's consider each category one by one.
We use the phrase online information service to mean America Online, CompuServe, Genie, Microsoft Network, or Prodigy. Each of these services charge you a monthly subscription fee for a dial-up modem connection (which is an example of the
category overlap mentioned previously). These services organize or add information content beyond what you will find on the raw Internet.
By contrast, ISPs usually don't add anything to your Internet access; they just give it to you straight and assume you know how to handle it. Some let you download a package of shareware Internet client programs, but then you're on your own.
The similarity between ISPs and online services is that both charge you a flat monthly rate, which gives you a certain number of "free" hours of connect time. If you go beyond your time limit, you are billed a separate rate per hour. You will
always get more free hours and a lower hourly rate with ISPs than you will with the online services.
Until very recently, you could not get decent access to the Internet on most of the information services. Today, you can browse the Web or the newsgroups from all of these services. Some will even let you pay to put your own home page on their Web
server. Similarly, some ISPs will also lease you disk space on their server if you want them to publish your Web pages. This is also referred to as Web hosting.
Let's digress for a moment to discuss this topic. The question is bound to come up, "Why do I need my own Web site if I can pay to have it done for me?" Hiring someone with a Web server to publish your content might be the way to go if you see
yourself meeting all of these criteria:
Some service providers say that they are giving you Web space and that your URL will be something such as ftp://serviceprovider.com/pub/YourUserId/file.html. Don't fall for this one! What they are giving you is
just an FTP directory to hold your HTML files. Yes, people with a Web browser could access and display your HTML files, but they would be accessing them through the FTP protocol, which requires that the client browser log on as an anonymous user. This
process takes time and is the wrong way to serve an HTML document.
The point of this list is not to help you choose between ISPs and online services. Rather, it is to show you that you probably don't want to let either of them publish your home page on your behalf. We presume that you are reading this book because you
want to learn how to administer your Web pages more dynamically.
If you made it through that list alive and are still thinking about leasing Web space (perhaps temporarily), you still have a lot to gain from this book. At the very least, you will be well prepared for the day you decide to take full control of your
Web site.
Before you get the impression that we are down on ISPs, let us return from our digression to the question at hand: Should you open an account with an ISP or with an online service?
Remember that an ISP offers total Internet access 24 hours a day, every day of the month. You would have to stack your money pretty high to get a similar deal from an online service. Even though we have just determined that we don't want the ISP to
publish our Web page for us, we still need their service to connect our Web server to the Internet.
Now that you have the basic information, we think you will see that this question is an easy issue to settle. The sample Web site that we are going to help you build in this book will be running 24 hours a day on your own Windows 95 server, and we are
going to show you how to develop your own client interaction software on the Web. So at this point, we make the decision to go with an ISP. Appendix A should be of some help in choosing an ISP inside or outside the U.S. Please be aware that as fast as ISPs
are popping up, there is no way that Appendix A is a comprehensive list, but it is a good place to start.
We have established that we want to open an ISP account. One of the first things the ISP is going to ask us is, do we want a dial-up (also called on-demand) connection or a dedicated line (also called exclusive)?
As far as hardware options go, a dial-up account can be offered over either modem or ISDN. A dedicated line can be offered over modem, ISDN, Switched-56, Frame Relay, Fractional T1, or T1.
Fortunately, we don't need to get into all of that just yet. Deciding between a dial-up or dedicated line is not a matter of judging the anticipated performance demands on our site. Rather, it is simply a matter of cost and convenience. Recall that the
Web site must run 24 hours a day. As it turns out, you can accomplish this with either a dial-up account or a dedicated line account.
We realize this terminology might sound a bit confusing. Further explanation is in order; but to keep this as simple as possible, let's agree for a moment that we are only talking about modem connections. The difference between a dial-up line and a
dedicated line is that a dial-up line connects to a modem pool at the ISP office, whereas a dedicated line gives a private phone number to the ISP. The advantage of the dedicated line is that we don't have to worry about getting a busy signal. If
the dedicated connection is lost, we can redial the ISP on our private number, without the risk of being unable to get back online immediately. Alas, few ISPs can offer you a dedicated phone number reserved for your account. At any rate, you will
definitely need a reserved IP address (more about that later).
Given the higher costs of the more sophisticated connections, let's assume we decide to get a dedicated line via modem. Chapter 16, "Maintaining and Tracking Your Website," shows you how to keep the connection from timing out and how to set it
up for automatic redial to recover from a disconnect.
This is where it gets high-tech. Just saying that we want a dedicated line didn't really narrow the field among the various types of hardware connections. Depending on your ISP, you will have a choice of connecting by modem, ISDN, Switched-56, Frame
Relay, or T1. At this point, you might want to refer back to Table 1.1, which showed the relative performance of these and other transmission technologies.
This issue is mostly a matter of cost versus performance. If you are on a low budget, a modem connection is probably your best bet—and the performance is quite reasonable for most small-business needs.
When choosing a modem, make sure that it supports V.34—the preferred standard for 28.8 Kbps data transmission over phone lines. If your modem also supports V.42bis, which is a data compression standard, your throughput could
run up to four times the transmission rate of the modem. We are careful to say up to because there are other factors that will usually prevent you from obtaining nirvana at the rate of 115 Kbps.
The first factor is line noise. The phone lines are probably overused, and there is nothing most of us can do about this. Line noise causes errors in the packets being transmitted. TCP/IP and PPP will detect this and force those packets to be
retransmitted, effectively lowering throughput. The good news is that we don't need to be concerned about this at the application layer because it is handled transparently by the lower-level protocols. Of course, we will notice it in the application layer,
such as when the CuteFTP status bar reports that our V.34 download is only running around 3 KBps. That translates to roughly 24 Kbps—slightly less than the potential of 28 Kbps. (By the way, this author hasn't heard of an Internet user who
consistently gets better than a 26 Kbps connection using a 28.8 Kbps modem.)
KBps stands for kilobytes per second, and Kbps means kilobits per second. Because there are 8 bits in a byte, 1 KBps is 8 times faster than 1 Kbps.
The second factor is the DTE (Data Terminal Equipment) to DCE (Data Communications Equipment) rate between your computer and your modem. (This is often just called the DTE rate.) Even if your phone line and modem are
able to scream at 115 Kbps, you have to make sure your computer will be able to process the data at that speed. This is why it is essential to have a 16550 UART. The UART is either built onto an internal modem or it is between the motherboard and the
serial port connection you make to an external modem. The 16550 is able to buffer more data than it predecessors, the 8250 and the 16450. Additionally, the operating system and your application—the Web server in this case—must be running fast
enough to handle the interrupts that are generated when new data arrives on the COM port. It also helps if you avoid running serious number-crunching programs in the background, or get a Pentium (or faster).
Here's a brief word of advice about your choice of screen savers. A Web site machine is usually not in use by its owner as often as it is by the clients who visit with their Web browsers. If this is true in
your case, it means that your screen saver is going to get a lot of exercise. This is fine for avoiding damage to your monitor, but keep in mind that some screen savers (especially some of the most graphically realistic ones) use many more CPU cycles than
others. If you want your server to deliver the best performance under heavy user loads, you should stay away from 3-D screen savers. These screen savers run complex algorithms, which will reduce the overall performance of your server.
If you expect your Web site to need increased bandwidth beyond 28.8 Kbps, you should consider ISDN. This book doesn't cover the other connection options such as Frame Relay or T1. These are subjects on which entire books have been written.
In addition to standard modem connections, Windows 95 Dial-up Networking supports ISDN. Integrated Services Digital Network is a set of digital transmission protocols defined by CCITT. The protocols are accepted as world-wide standards.
There are two price points with ISDN: the Basic Rate Interface (BRI) and the Primary Rate Interface (PRI). Both consist of some number of 64 Kbps B channels and a shared D channel. BRI contains two B channels, and PRI contains 23. The B channels, or
bearer channels, are used for both voice and data transmission. The D channel, or data channel (referring to the data of the phone company), is used for setting up the calls and monitoring the status of all the B channels. You are billed for your usage
time of each B channel. One of the neat things about ISDN is that you can piggy-back two B channels together to increase your throughput when you need to transfer a large file.
For an online primer to ISDN, see these sites:
To use ISDN, you will need a special router or adapter card. There are a growing number of ISDN hardware products available. Here is a helpful list of companies that currently make ISDN devices for personal computers and networks:
Ascend Communications, Inc., 800-621-9578
AT&T Distributor: Volt, 800-566-8658
Connective Strategies, Inc., 703-802-0023
CoSystems, Inc., 408-748-2190
DGM&S, Inc., 609-866-1212
Digiboard, 800-344-4273
Eicon Technology Corp., 514-631-2592
EuRoNis, +33-142334098, Paris
Extension Technology Corp., 415-390-8130, 508-872-7748
Fujitsu ISDN Division, 800-228-ISDN (4736)
Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc., 415-974-5544, 404-441-1617
Hewlett-Packard, 800-637-7740
International Business Machines Corp., 800-IBM-2YOU
CALL, 919-254-0434, 507-253-7294
ISCOM, Inc., 301-779-1368
ISDN Systems Corp., 703-883-0933
Link Technology, Inc., 215-357-3354
Mitel Corp., 613-592-2122
Motorola UDS, 510-734-8820, 714-285-0824, 205-430-8902
MPR Teltech Ltd., 604-293-6047
NCR Network Products Division 612-638-7685, 612-638-7828
OST, Inc., 403-817-0400
Silicon Graphics, 415-390-2522
Sun Microsystems Computer Corp., 415-336-4433
Xyplex, 800-338-5316
A question closely tied to your choice of connection speed and hardware options is whether you plan to run on a stand-alone PC or from a PC on a local area network.
If your company already runs an Internet server, you might be able to connect to the Internet by going through your LAN to that server. The cost and performance of this option should be favorable. The only bad news is that there are security
implications. You will want to plan this carefully with a skilled network administrator or a Microsoft Certified Engineer. Here are a couple of things to consider:
The rest of this section briefly discusses four alternative types of Internet connections, in increasing order of expense. The first two are based on a stand-alone PC and therefore require the use of Dial-Up Networking; the last two are based on a LAN
environment.
This connection is the simplest and least expensive. You need an Windows 95 computer for Dial-Up Networking and your Web server, a modem (internal or external), and a standard phone line to dial your ISP. See Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1. 28.8 Kbps dial-up connection.
This arrangement is one step up in cost and performance from the modem configuration above. We replace the modem with an ISDN adapter card. The ISDN line installed by the phone company is plugged directly into the back of the ISDN adapter in the PC. See
Figure 3.2.
Figure 3.2. Dial-Up Networking ISDN connection.
With the addition of the Ethernet card to run on a LAN, this configuration is costs more than the stand-alone diagrams above. See Figure 3.3. However, this setup will give Internet access to all of your LAN users, in addition to providing you with a
high-performance Web site for your clients.
A CSU/DSU is a Channel Service Unit/Data Service Unit. In this case, a CSU/DSU is to a digital line what a modem is to an analog line. Some ISDN routers, such as the Ascend Pipeline 50 HX, include the CSU/DSU.
Figure 3.3. Network ISDN connection.
The key advantages of this option are
This is essentially the same as the previously discussed configuration except for the change in the type of router. Your decision to go with this option depends on the leased-line pricing from the phone company and the availability of this connection to
your ISP. See Figure 3.4.
Figure 3.4. Network leased-line connection.
For the small office or home office, going with an ISDN line may be just the ticket. Many telecommunications companies now offer ISDN cards or routers that include at least one analog phone port, often referred to as POTS (Plain old Telephone System).
This configuration will allow you to maintain an ISDN connection to your ISP and either FAX or make a phone call on the same line at the same time. If in addition to the ISDN adapter you have a standard modem connected to your server, you could connect it
to an analog port of the ISDN adapter for back up. This way, if the ISDN router goes down at your ISP, you could still make a connection using the standard modem.
Internet Services Providers (ISPs) are popping up almost everywhere. If you're like most people, you will need an ISP to serve as your intermediary to the Internet—that is, unless you are fortunate enough to have your own T-3 connection to the
Internet backbone.
Most Internet providers have one or several T-1 lines, and their connectivity with the backbone is largely through T-3 lines. Internet Service Providers almost always offer standard dial-up connections via modem (14.4 Kbps–28.8 Kbps). Most also
offer Frame Relay (56 Kbps–1.544 Mbps), and/or ISDN BRI (56 Kbps–128Kbps). Large, well-established ISPs even offer T-1 connections. Several major Internet Service Providers are listed in Appendix A.
There are some important things to consider when choosing an ISP. First, choose an ISP with a good reputation for customer service. After you have found a service provider in your area, call the provider and see if they are able to provide the services
that you want, and at a suitable price.
Second, consider what caliber of hardware the provider is running. For example, do they have a fault-tolerant system? How many servers do they have? For that matter, how many customers and phone lines/modems do they have? This is important if you want
to avoid getting a busy signal. Hopefully, their performance matches their customer needs. Most importantly, how often does their system go down (also called Mean-Time Between Failure)?
Finally, each ISP has a different list of setup and monthly costs. You might want to do some price checking with the ISPs you are considering. See the next section below for a description of what you will need to ask.
This book assumes you are using a dial-up or dedicated 28.8 Kbps connection, but you will want to ensure that the ISP has the capability to provide you with higher bandwidth connections for growth—perhaps up to T1.
Here are the services required for the sample Web site you will build in this book.
You will also want to make sure that the ISP has a network news feed for your favorite newsgroups. This is optional, but is strongly recommended for business Web sites. You will be amazed at what you can find if
you monitor key newsgroups relevant to your business. We definitely don't recommend that you run NNTP (Network News Transfer Protocol). Rather, all you need to do is subscribe to selected newsgroups. When you download only the article headers, you avoid
impacting your Web site too heavily.
Because every interface on the Internet must have a unique IP address, there must be a central authority for allocating these addresses. That authority is the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC). The ISP will send you a form that you fill out
and e-mail to hostmaster@internic.net to register your domain. You do have the option of running your own DNS server, but that would complicate matters significantly.
A sample of the DNS registration form being used by InterNIC at the time of this writing is included in Appendix C and on the CD-ROM. To obtain the most up-to-date form, use your Web browser and go to InterNIC Registration Services at http://rs.internic.net/rs-internic.html. There you will find all the current forms used by InterNIC.
After sending the form to InterNIC, you will get an automated reply telling you that InterNIC has received your request and how long it will take until your domain name is available for use. The last domain name this author requested took eight days to
process (because of a backlog at InterNIC of 4000 domain name requests).
Now that you have opened an account opened and applied for a domain name, you are ready to move on. Hey, you didn't think we were going to sit around for eight days just to have an official domain name. That should be just enough time for you to get your server installed and all of your HTML code written. You can finish Part II and Part III before you need your domain name.
