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Web
Hosting
The Internet has unleashed a number of business
opportunities, the basic of which is what is known as web hosting. Web hosting
ISPs will provide the servers where the sites are hosted, for example, when you
type www.hotline.com, your request goes to the server on which the site is
residing. Some of the smaller entities cannot afford to buy their own servers,
so they lease server space. This has resulted in the web hosting opportunity.
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A virtual private network is a group of computer
systems, typically connected to a private network (a network built and
maintained by an organization solely for its own use) with limited
public-network access that communicates "securely" over a public
network. VPNs may exist between an individual machine and a private network
(client-to-server) or a remote LAN and a private network (server-to-server).
Security features differ from product to product, but most security experts agree
that VPNs include encryption, strong authentication of remote users or hosts,
and mechanisms for hiding or masking information about the private network
topology from potential attackers on the public network. As networks get more
and more complicated, many corporate may just want to outsource the entire
service to a provider who offers managed data network services. That means
creating and running the whole network – including Intranet, extranet and VPN –
for a corporate client.
Internet telephony is the new technology where phone
calls can be made in any part of the world through the Internet. There are
various web sites offering Net Telephony services like Net2phone -
www.Net2Phone.com, Vocaltec - www.vocaltec.com, NetMeeting www.netmeeting.com.
The voice quality is not comparable to that of the normal telephone call.
According to a survey, it has been found that price is a more favored feature
than quality. Internet telephony is banned in India. If detected an ISP can
lose its operating license.
E-mail
Incoming e-mail is received by the ISP and stored in
a mailbox on a computer known as a Post Office Protocol server. The message is
downloaded to a mailbox on the user computer, when he logs in and runs his mail
software. Outgoing e-mail is essentially the same process in reverse. Quality
expectations are up and user fees are down. The result is that low budget/low
volume/low quality/low cost systems can no longer expect to find a profitable
initial niche in most markets.