• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

 1 of 6

Gallery

Be your own ISP

Posted on 24 Sep 2002 at 12:53

Tim Woodward begins a two-part feature on how to become your own ISP - with virtually no capital outlay or technical expertise

Latest research indicates that around 544 million of us are Internet users in one way or another. This is a large group of potential customers if you've ever thought of making Internet service provision part of your business. Opportunities exist for anyone who wants to offer Internet services as an added revenue stream for their existing clients, or even for those who want to start a whole new business venture. Whatever the reason, the process of becoming an ISP is nowhere near as complicated or as costly as you might think.
Perhaps the most likely candidate for wanting to offer Internet services is the web designer. If you design and build websites for your clients, the Web is your everyday workplace and you're likely to be a heavy user of Internet services. When you start out, you can probably get away with recommending your clients to their local ISP or just uploading your creation to the customer's existing web space.
But why not provide hosting yourself? You'll have far more control over user access, server-side programming and what goes where, and you can also present a complete and transparent service to the client - hopefully, you can even make a profit on the deal as well.
Another likely candidate for DIY Internet service provision might be a local newspaper or magazine publication. You may already provide a portal on your website for regional events, news and opinion. As an ISP, you can go much further and host other local organisations and businesses, generating advertising revenue and providing an extremely worthwhile virtual community in the process.
Trade associations, unions and clubs also fall into this category. You could provide a place for your members to group together and catch up on relevant industry news and events. And why not offer Internet access, email and web space as a membership perk in the process?
Of course, you might just see the 'be your own ISP' idea as a business venture in its own right - like Easyspace, Fasthosts, WebFusion, Magic Moments and many others too numerous to mention. These folk specialise in providing Internet services to the rest of us so we can surf the Web, publish our web pages and get our email. Unfortunately, though, most of them are now huge and impersonal - you only have to try the telephone helplines to see. Being your own ISP can offer a more local and personal service for your clients and should provide for a viable business venture in the process.
But surely, I hear you say, for this to work I'll need masses of financial backing, a direct connection to the Internet backbone and an encyclopaedic knowledge of DNS name servers, IP addresses, mail servers, network protocols and the telecommunications infrastructure. Well yes, you might one day, but in this feature we'll show you how you can provide virtual ISP services for your customers cheaply and easily, with no expensive hardware required, little technical involvement and no up-front outlay.
What is an ISP?
First, it's a good idea to identify what constitutes an ISP. Internet service provision usually revolves around a combination of four services: domain name registration and hosting, web space hosting, email provision and dial-up Internet access. Although people tend to associate the ISP acronym with dial-up, most regular surfers are looking to use either broadband or flat-rate Internet access from companies like BT Internet, AOL or Freeserve.
We ought to separate here the two types of potential customers - those who want access to the Internet to surf all day, and those who want space for their business website and proper multi-user email to individuals within their organisation. The 'personal' user is of little use to you as an ISP. Fast web hosting and POP3 email probably aren't high on their list of priorities.