INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are businesses that own equipment that enable users to access the Internet for sending e-mail, browsing the World Wide Web, and downloading files. Unlike commercial online services (AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe) who have substantial amounts of proprietary content for users to browse, ISPs primarily function as a conduit to the Internet.

VENDORS

Company Headquarters

Phone Number / Technical Support POPs

ANS

Elmsford, NY

800/456-8267 (38)

AT&T

Bridgewater,NJ

800/967-5363 (200+)

BBN Planet

Cambridge, MA

800/472-4565 (311)

GNN

Vienna, VA

800/819-6112 (650)

IDT

Hackensack, NJ

201/928-1000 (under 500)

MCI

Washington, DC

800/955-6505 (around 300)

Netcom

San Jose, CA

800/501-8649 (230+)

PSINet

Herndon, VA

800/827-7482 (300)

UUNet

Fairfax, VA

800/488-6383 (300)

BUYING POINTS ISP Set-Up

It is estimated that there are more than 2,000 Internet service providers scattered around the country. These range from two-person shoestring operations to national companies with thousands of employees and billions of dollars of network infrastructure.

Connection To The ISP

Depending on your expected usage, you can connect to the Internet via a dial-up line or via a dedicated data line. If only one person will typically browse the Internet at a time, you should be fine with dial-up service. This means that you use a modem and a regular phone line to connect to the provider. A regular 28,800 bits per second (bps) modem is acceptable for most browsing; however, users who regularly visit graphic-intensive sites may want to consider using an ISDN connection to the ISP. ISDN offers connection speeds up to 128,000 bps, but requires an ISDN "modem" and ISDN service from your local telephone company.

When examining ISPs, make sure they offer a dial-up number in your local calling area. This will reduce phone charges for the connection. You should also inquire about the number of modems the ISP has to handle incoming calls. A good rule of thumb is that there should be one modem for every ten customers.

Businesses that will have several people simultaneously using the Internet will want to consider a dedicated line. Dedicated lines directly connect your office to the Internet service provider. You pay a relatively high monthly charge, but do not pay for each minute of connection time.

The smallest dedicated lines are 56K lines, which can handle 2 or 3 simultaneous users. However, most users will want to purchase a fractional T1 line, which can be increased to handle higher loads in 64,000 bps increments. A full T1 can handle dozens of simultaneous users, and even larger T3 connections are available for the largest firms.

Differences Between ISP Networks

Most Internet traffic is carried on large national networks that cross the country. Individual ISPs connect to this backbone via data pipes of varying sizes. If the provider uses too small a pipe, you may face long waiting periods when accessing other parts of the Internet.

To avoid this problem, check the size of the data pipes used by the ISP. Many smaller services use a single T1 line, a data line capable of handling up to 1,544,000 bits of information per second. While this may sound like a lot, several dozen simultaneous users can easily overwhelm this link. Most business sites will be better off looking for a provider that uses multiple T1 lines, or even larger T3 lines.

Firms should also look into the provider's network redundancy. Ideally, a provider will have more than one connection to the Internet backbone, so you can send and receive e-mail and browse outside sites even if one link is down.

Finally, check the number of connections, or "hops" between your provider and the Internet backbone. Many providers connect to the backbone through another provider. Using an Internet provider that is more than two steps removed from the Internet can slow the speed at which you can access other sites.

Technical Support

Finding an ISPs that offers strong customer service tends to be a real challenge. Many providers fail to live up to their service promises, with users often encountering long waits for help.

If you are just obtaining dial-up service, your risk is fairly limited. If you are not satisfied with your ISP, you can usually just sign up with another service. The only real difficulty is notifying people of your new e-mail address.

If you are installing a dedicated line, you are making a much longer-term commitment. Make sure to check references to gauge how much support you can really expect to receive from the provider.

Terms & Rates

Internet service providers tend to offer Web and e-mail access at quite low rates. The cheapest service is a basic shell account, which typically offers unlimited browsing for about $10 or $15 per month. The problem with shell accounts is that you cannot use graphical browsers, which means you cannot take advantage of most of the attractions of the Web.

For full graphical access, you need to obtain a SLIP or PPP account. These allow you to use popular browsers such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer while connected to the ISP. SLIP/PPP accounts cost $20 to $40 per month. Not all offer unlimited access, but most set fairly high usage limits per month.

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 2)

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 2)

Rule #4: Be careful with your images!

When designing your web pages, you need to keep in mind that people will not be reading them locally (as if they were saved on their own computer). Rather, they will be down loading it, sometimes over slow modems. This means they'll have to wait for every image to download. This can take a long time.

How to get around this problem? Two ways. First, you should limit the number of images on a single page. Second, the images you do have on your page should be made as small as possible, both in physical size and file size. I'll address these separately.

The first solution should be fairly easy to deal with. Just don't load up your page with graphics upon graphics upon graphics. I've actually had more problems with websites from large corporations being graphically loaded than websites from small businesses and individuals. In my opinion, that's because small businesses and individuals are more likely to be made up of decision makers who are actually on the Internet. The decision makers at large corporations just think they should be on the Internet, and they delegate setting up the website to the same designers who design their print materials. Print and web design are two different animals!

Anyway, for every image you put on the page, decide if it's vital to the topic of the page, or if it's just there to look good. Eliminate unnecessary images, as they only serve to slow down the loading of your web pages.

As for the second suggestion, a little image education may be in order. Physical image size is easy to understand, and has a direct correlation with the file size. The larger the image, the larger the file size, and the longer it takes to download.

If you have a large image that you'd like people to be able to see, produce a much smaller version (called a thumbnail), and put the thumbnail, linked to the larger version, on your page. If a person's interested in seeing the larger version, they can click on the thumbnail. If they aren't interested, they don't have to sit through the extended download time. If you do this, make sure to add text by the thumbnail telling the reader how big the file is, so they know how long they'll have to wait.

To reduce the file size of your images without reducing the physical size (as well as for producing thumbnails), you'll need image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photo-Paint. Creating thumbnails is as easy as reducing the dimensions of your image and saving it under a new name.

There are two methods you can use to reduce the file size while keeping the dimensions constant. First, you can alter the image by reducing the number of colors in the image. For instance, say you've scanned in a photo of yourself to put on your website. Typically, your scanner will bring the photo in with at least 4,096 colors (called "true color"). Most people browsing the web will have their systems set for 256 colors. Anything over that is a waste. So, reduce the image's colors to 256 - you'll barely notice a difference, and you'll lose around two-thirds of the file size!

The other method of reducing file size is by saving the image in the proper format. On the Internet, you should only save images in the GIF and JPEG graphics formats. In general, GIF is best for non-photo graphics, such as clip art, and JPEG is best for photos. This is because JPEG is a lossy compression format (it compresses the image, making the file size smaller, by dropping out bits of the image), and photos show less degradation of quality. If you are saving an image as a JPEG, you can control the amount of compression you wish to use. The higher the compression, the lower the quality will be.

The GIF format, on the other hand, is a lossless compression format (it compresses the image as much as it can, without dropping out any data). GIF images retain all their quality, at the expense of usually larger file sizes. One other advantage of the GIF format is that you can set the image's background to be transparent, which can make your graphics look more interesting on the page.

Finally, the latest version of the GIF format, GIF89a, can save graphics in an interlaced fashion (rather than saving the data line by line from the top of the image to the bottom, it saves every fifth line from the top to the bottom, like venetian blinds, then starts again from the top, until the whole image is saved). This is particularly advantageous to the reader who is using a Netscape or other interlaced-compatible browser, as the image will load in from top to bottom quickly, but at a low quality, gradually sharpening up as more lines load. The reader will not have to wait for the entire image to load before they can see what it is and decide whether or not they want to wait for the entire image to load.

Don't feel trapped into using JPEG only for photos and GIF for clip art. If you aren't concerned about your image being interlaced and/or having a transparent background, try both formats when you save it, and use the one that ends up smaller.

Now, don't get me wrong. You can design some beautiful pages that are made up entirely of images. However, you'd better make sure that you've reduced the size of the images as much as you can, or else you'll have a lot of people who stop downloading your page before it's half over, only to jump to someone else's page. Not good!

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 1)

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 1)

The whole object of getting on the web is to get noticed. Of course, you want good notices, not bad notices. One way to assure yourself of bad notices is to have poorly designed web pages. And believe me, bad pages will get you noticed, most likely by people like a certain Mr. Mirsky, who runs a website called "Worst of the Web." Put up exceptionally poorly designed web pages (or bizarre content), and you could have the "good" fortune to receive a review at his site, which is a dubious honor at best (unless, of course, you're trying to have a bad website - that's another story...).

THE RULES OF GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN

Rule #1: Make it readable!

It's better to have a plain black and white web page with no graphics whatsoever but with highly readable text, than it is to have a jazzed up page with an intricate Netscape background and purple and green text. You're putting information up for people to read. Make sure they can actually read it!

If you're writing your web pages for Netscape browsers, you have the option of using background colors and images. My suggestion is to stick with solid colored backgrounds, preferably light pastel colored backgrounds (white to mint green) with black text.

An exception to the above rule is when you will be displaying a number of images on a page, such as an "art gallery." In this case, a dark background will enhance your images. However, be sure to limit the amount of text on a dark background, as it is much harder on the eye.

However, if you must have a background image, you'll have the best readability if you stick with a light embossed grey-on-grey graphic, rather than the wildly multicolored graphics I've seen at many websites. In general, though, any background images will decrease the readability of the text on the page.

Text values should be the opposite of the background. If the background is light, the text should be dark. If the background is dark, the text should be light. Enough said.

Rule #2: Break up your pages into chunks!

I can't tell you how many websites I've been to that have this problem: it's one page of text that goes on, and on, and on, and on... scrolling ad infinitum. This is a BIG no-no!

A lot of this falls back to readability. As a rule, I wouldn't go much beyond two screens of information per page, unless the extra information is strictly on the main topic of the page. For instance, a page of links to other web pages can extend much, much farther than a page full of book reviews. I would put each book review on its own page.

This, of course, necessitates some sort of navigation links on each page. However, your readers will appreciate the extra work you put into splitting your pages into bite-sized chunks, rather than one endless tome. If you don't agree with this philosophy, look at it this way: which would you rather have to read, a document printed on a twenty foot long 8½" wide single sheet of paper, or printed on twenty regular sized pages, broken up into sections?

Rule #3: Don't overuse horizontal rules!

One of HTML's built-in features is the horizontal rule. This puts a horizontal line on the page whenever it is invoked. And it's so simple to invoke: just put

---

in your HTML code, and you have a horizontal rule. I wish it wasn't so simple.

The other evening, I was speeding through web pages, and I came across one that had some information I needed. Unfortunately, the author put a horizontal rule between every single paragraph! I don't know if they thought they had some sort of slick design thing going on, but besides being ugly, it made finding the particular information I wanted into a real task. Imagine this report with a horizontal line between every paragraph! Better yet, how about if I do it for awhile, to give you a taste!

Notice how the horizontal line actually makes the paragraphs seem closer together than plain white space does? That's the problem. Even if you allow extra white space for the horizontal rule, it will appear to pull your paragraphs together, rather than separate them.

If you must use a horizontal rule, make sure it's there for a reason. Don't just use them to separate paragraphs, use them to show a change of context. In other words, in this report, a horizontal line would fit just fine in the space between the end of one of these design rules, and the beginning of the next. An applicable web page example would be to use a horizontal rule between the end of your text and your navigation or credits sections.

An even better design option than the horizontal rule, though slightly more work, would be to use a small, unobtrusive graphic to denote a change of context on your page. This doesn't mean one of the "cutesy" versions of the horizontal rule which you'll see all over the web (a mouse with a long horizontal squiggly tail, a wavy ocean, etc.).

The best option, though, is to remove those excess horizontal rules from your web page, and replace it with white space.

"HOW YOUR WEB SITE CAN GENERATE OVER 25

"HOW YOUR WEB SITE CAN GENERATE OVER 25

TIMES MORE BUYING CUSTOMERS IN LESS THAN

A YEAR."

by Michael W. Campbell

Get Rid Of Everything On The Home Page

Put what you now call your home page inside your web site

and use it as a directory to navigate your site. Set up a

new home page, its sole purpose should be to attract a

major search engine and funnel the visitors inside, to your

site's directory. The home page should not contain any

frames, tables or scripts of any kind. Use plain simple

html consisting of title, headlines, links and body copy,

perhaps even a small graphic or two. You don't even need

meta tags on the home page.

Use More Than One Site

Retailers do it in the real world so why limit yourself to

one location in the virtual world. What is hosting going to

cost you, $25.00 a month? That's a drip in a ocean compared

to the enormous boost in traffic that more sites will

bring. Start with six web sites, mirror the content, put

slightly different headlines and meta tags on each of the

mirrored pages. If your original site consisted of 10

pages, you now have 60 pages working for you in the search

engines. Since mirroring is being frowned on by some

lately, you might want to get around this by making each

site into a different product category. Simply make each

site highly targeted to one product line and tie the look

and feel of the various sites together by using the same

graphic design style and logos.

Cross Linking

Very important, make sure each page inside your site (not

the home pages) links to all your other sites and pages.

Each internal page will contain 59 links, the best way to

do this is with a 1x1 pixel transparent gif. Doing this

will beat the link popularity penalty that's employed by

several search engines. It will also create a self

maintaining "stickiness". Now it doesn't matter if the

engine tosses out all your pages except two of them. When

it comes to crawl again, the two pages that stuck in the

index have links to all your other pages, and the crawler

will find them again.

Set Up 150 Doorway Pages (I call them hook pages)

Yes it seems like a lot, but if you have products from 10

manufacturers and they each have 10 different models, thats

100 hook pages per manufacturer or 1000 hook pages in all.

Just start with your most popular makes and models, or

generic product categories. Make two a week and you'll have

over 100 hook pages working for you in the search engines

by the end of the year. Will you be accused of spamming the

engine, no. They are not going to penalize you for

providing legitimate pages that contain content that people

are actually searching for. Do hook pages still work, yes.

Hook pages are my number one source for generating

visitors. They work extremely well.

Invert Your Database

Someone once told you that an online database is a good

thing, well not if you want to be found in the search

engines. If your database contains 2000 items, there might

be 100 different makes or models and they each have 20

different accessories. Make a static web page for each make

or model. That will give you 100 additional highly targeted

pages working for you in the search engines. Price changes

are easy if your html software is like mine and can make

global changes to everything in a folder. Just add an item

number or sku number before the price. Then tell your html

software to search and replace all instances of that sku

number from old to new price.

Submitting an Announcing

Announce only one page per day to each search engine. If

you have 60 web pages it will take 60 days. Just be sure to

track which pages have been announced to which search

engines. If the search engine specifies that only the home

page can be submitted, follow the rules, you have been

cookied.

Summary

Get more than one site, mirror the content or put different

product categories on each. Just be sure to get domain

names with keywords in them. Put up a plain home pages -

but they'll be search engine beauties - that lead to your

"real" home / directory / navigational pages. Cross link

everything with invisible pixels. Write two hook pages a

week focusing on both generic product categories and

specific makes and models. Wait at least 24 hours before

submitting another page from the same domain to the search

engines.

There, in less than a year, you've gone from one site with

10 pages, to six sites totalling 60 pages, plus 100 hook

pages, plus 100 database pages, to a grand total of 260

pages working for you in the search engines. From 10 to

260, that's 26 times more likely to be found, 26 times

greater chance of having just the right keyword density to

be "flavor of the month". If you follow this simple formula

and put in the "sweat equity" required, you'll always have

at least 20 top positioned pages in the 8 major search

engines at any given moment in time.

===========================================

Michael W. Campbell is the author of the new internet

marketing book "Nothing But 'Net: How I Generated

$750,000.00 in Internet Revenues in Less Than a

Year With Virtually No Advertising Costs."

( http://www.palis.com/net )

===========================================