Links to the Internet

There are various ways to link your Internet server to the Internet and the one you choose depends on your expected data throughput, the traffic of visitors and the size of your budget. The main requirement is to provide a link between your computer and the company that links you to the Internet backbone. For most installations, the link will be between your computer and an ISP (Internet Service Provider) who will then manage the link onto the main Internet backbone. If you are considering a direct connection to the Internet backbone and setting yourself up as an ISP, then you are far in advance of the scope of this book!

Figure 2.1: Connecting to the Internet using an ISP

The advantage of linking via an ISP is that they do all the hard work of managing the link to the backbone. In fact, if you choose your ISP carefully, you are likely to use a company that is one of the backbone providers which means that there will be no problems with performance. There are two points that you should check when choosing your ISP: is the company a backbone provider and what sort of links do they offer to link your server.

Every ISP offers basic dial-up access, using a modem and aimed at personal users. In some cases, you could use this service to trial a server installation, but it would soon hit its limits. The alternatives are a digital dial-up service, such as...