Useful Links

Useful Links

Web Hosting Services

(Shared hosting gives you your own domain controlled by a server that is also used by other customers. Colocation gives you a domain controlled by a server which is for your exclusive use. In both cases, the host company runs the server, supplying internet access, power, air conditioning and system management. You often have to make separate arrangements for data backup.

Internet Magazine and Computer Shopper are good sources for hosting services in the UK.

Web Tapestry: a UK-based company offering a range of services from shared hosting with PHP and MySQL to colocation.

Super Cert Hosting: a US-based company offering secure SSL hosting with support for PHP, ASP, PERL and more.

UK-based Equipment Suppliers

Micro Mart magazine is a good source of mail order companies.

Scan in Bolton and Eclipse in Coventry, both sell cheap ethernet cards and cables.

I bought my switch and my gateway from Technomatic.

Inmac sells components for computers including a range of keyboard/video/mouse switches.

Radio Spares supplies a huge range of electronics parts by mail order. There's also Black Box and Maplin, which has a few shops in large towns.

Broadband Access in the UK

A braodband connection gives you fast access to the internet - faster than a telephone modem or ISDN connection.

All broadband suppliers offer a domestic service and a business-class service. A domestic connection is restrictive - you can only use it for personal purposes and you are supposed to only connect one computer. Some suppliers are fairly militant about people using a domestic connection for business, even getting upset if you put a link to your business web site on your personal pages. You cannot run your own public servers (web server, mail server etc) using a domestic connection. Instead you get a mailbox and some web space on a shared server.

Business-class connections cost more than domestic connections. They are faster and less restricted. You can run public servers on a business-class connection.

The alternative to a broadband connection is a leased line. These are much more expensive - many thousands of Pounds per year. They usually offer guaranteed bandwidth, which means that you can always get a connection of a certain speed to somewhere on the internet, for example to the ISP's premises on the west coast of the USA. Any useful connection usually goes to there and then beyond, but the guarantee increases the chance of a good end-to-end connection.

Broadband connections are shared with other customers and there are no bandwidth guarantees. If lots of other people are using the same equipment as you, your connection can slow down. Business-class connections are shared between less customers, so this is less of a problem.

In truth, bandwidth is not a real problem in the UK at present. I have been using a domestic cable modem connection at home for years and it has always been fast. Things may change as more people start to use broadband and the equipment gets clogged Only time will tell.

NTL offer a cable modem service within their cable TV franchises. With the domestic service you can rent a cable modem from NTL or buy your own. Buying is cheaper in the long run. If you opt to buy the modem, you have to do that by mail order. NTL's approved source is a company called Global Direct.

TeleWest offer a cable modem service within their cable TV franchises. With their domestic service, renting a modem is the only option.

BT Internet offer an ADSL service over their telephone wires, but you have to live close to a suitably-equipped telephone exchange. They also resell the ADSL service through a large number of Internet Service Providers, so you can get a wide range of deals (assuming you can take the service at all).