Let's say you had a site hosted on Earthlink's free server space. Your web address (URL) would be something along the lines of This is a very long web address that will be hard for your customers to remember. It's also hard to communicate this address to those not familiar with the terms "slash", "tilda", etc. The length also makes it difficult to fit the address on a business card.

Be my guest. A professional depends on reliability to keep his or her customers. Free web space offers no guarantees of stability in the long- or short-term, and stability is the name of the game concerning your presence on the internet. Sites that are designed and created by Runningdog.co.

ISP provides an Internet connection for a monthly fee. Typically, you receive a username, password, and an e-mail account. You access the ISP's server with a modem by dialing in over a phone line or using faster methods such as cable or digital subscriber lines (DSL).

No. The software you have installed from BigPond will only work for BigPond Dial-Up Residential services. Please contact your ISP to find out if they are participating in the IAP.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) often offer web hosting for free. In most cases, the URL to your site would be something like "http://www.yourISP/~yoursitename". Not too professional. Some ISPs offer web hosting as an additional service (enabling you to have a professional address, such as http://www.yoursitename.com), but there is no particular advantage or necessity to host your site with your ISP. There are many web hosting companies offering a variety of services at very competitive rates.

You can use free disk space to publish a few pages but soon you will run out of space for your pictures, etc. Also, your site will probably be hosted under the domain name of your ISP (ex. http://www.bigisp.com/~yoursite). This gives people a cheap impression and creates no top of the mind awareness for your name or brand, if commercial activity is even permitted at all by your ISP.

That is an option available to you, but it would be like comparing a lemonade stand on the corner to a retail juice bar in a mall -- how much traffic and visibility will you get? When you promote your business web site address as www.abcbears.com it will make one impression while http://home.earthlink.net/~abcbears will make quite another. Personal web pages typically have design and traffic limitations and some search engines will not allow them to be submitted for review.

No. However, as we supply Internet connectivity, web space and email facilities, you would not need an alternative supplier.

Home Federal is currently using Computer Concepts. We would also suggest that you use one of the providers listed in the yellow pages of the local phone directory.

My personal advice is - don't do it. I say this simply because I think the market is flooded right now. Internet service has become a commodity item. It is very difficult to distinguish yourself from the competition on anything but price.

While you should be able to continue using your current ISP with Ositech's products, you will have to be sure of a few things. As Cellular data generally provides a slower form of connection than traditional landline modems, you will have to confirm that your ISP will accept low speed dial-up connections (below 19,200 for Digital and below 9600 for Analog).

You can, but nothing is really free. The problem with the free servers is that they need to support themselves through advertising - which comes in the form of banner ads (annoying) or pop-ups - REALLY annoying. Plus, you have no control over the content of those ads, and do you really want something advertising 'marital aids' on your babysitting site? top

ISP is an Internet Service Provider. The ISP provides you with a connection to the Internet. Hence the ISP directly determines the speed of you connection. A good ISP should be able to connect you at speeds in excess of 28.8 kbps.