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Connecting Your Office to the Internet
The cost of connecting your office to the Internet has never been lower. The introduction of 'un-metered' Internet access services means that you pay a flat monthly fee to a provider and you then connect to the Internet using a Freecall telephone number as often as you wish. These unmetered products connect at either 56kb/s (modem), 64kb/s (ISDN) or 128kb/s (bonded ISDN).
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The connection to the telecoms socket on the wall is made by a modem or ISDN adapter - either of these can be a card inside a computer or a stand-alone box. We usually recommend that a stand-alone box is used because then
any connection faults can be cleared by simply resetting the box,
instead of having to reboot a functional computer. |
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The stand-alone boxes are optimised for the task and tend to be more reliable than using a dedicated or shared computer. The indicator lights on the box give you an immediate status condition for the connection and make troubleshooting that much easier and quicker to accomplish. When a group of computers share an Internet connection the flow of data from the internal network to the Internet has to be controlled in a special manner. For a connection to be made between a computer in your office and a computer (website) on the Internet the connection box has to carry out a process called Network Address Translation (NAT). In essence this NAT process takes an Internet address on the external side of the box and shares it out between all the computers on the internal network. Setting up this process for a single office is quite simple; but, for a multiple site company additional planning and design work may be required. This design work is critical for a multi-site Windows 2000 network. NAT has an additional (often forgotten) feature; as all the internal computers are sharing the single external address the configuration of the internal network is hidden from computers on the the Internet. Although not as secure as a Firewall, this does provide a degree of protection from hackers and web server viruses. |
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If you are fortunate to be in an area served by cable TV or ADSL then you can connect your office by one of these broadband technologies. Broadband connections tend to start at at least 256kb/s and can increase up to 2Mb/s.
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The other bonus of broadband is that the line is 'always on'; however, with that advantage comes a risk - hackers can always see your external address(es) and they have then the time to attack your connection device. For that reason we always advise that cable and ADSL connected networks should be protected by a properly configured Firewall box. |
| A Firewall is a specialised device of software product that checks every packet of data flowing through itself and by a set of customised rules either allows the data to flow or drops the connection before problems arise. | |
Setting up these connections sometimes requires a change of Internet Service
provider (ISP), this is a process that we are experienced in successfully
completing, for additional information we have linked in a file showing
a typical sequence of events to move ISP (note. This file needs Acrobat
Reader)
We hope that this quick introduction on how we can connect your office
to the Internet gives you an understanding of the processes and equipment
involved. For more information please complete an information request form and one of our
team will contact you to discuss your requirements 
