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In-house Web

George Albert

Imagine the power you will have if your Web site is located within the physical confines of your house or office. Not only does it provide the security of having everything within your control, it also makes trouble-shooting easier and faster.

However, in a typical scenario today, you approach an Internet service provider (ISP) to set up a Web site. The ISP may host the site on its server but generally will talk to a Web hosting company in the US. This means that if you have a prob lem, you talk to the ISP which will talk to the hosting company before it is rectified. Sadly, you are based far away from the problem.

Technology enables you to overcome this problem and host the Web site in the physical confines of your office. However, it means that you will need a Web technology person to handle the server of the Web site.

It is ideal for small to medium businesses to have the Web site within the office. Most large businesses adopt this strategy but their technology is expensive to handle the large volumes of transactions.

What does a small business need to adopt this strategy at a low cost? In hardware, it needs a high-end PC or server and a permanent connection to the Net. On the software side, it needs a Web server and a database and on the personnel side it w ill need a Web developer, a Web designer and a writer to upgrade the product database. The personnel can, of course, be hired on a contract basis.

A high-end PC or server is easily purchased in the

market. The permanent connection to the Net is important so that customers have access to the Web site all the time. This can be achieved either with an ISDN line which transfers data at 128 kilo bits per second or a faster cable line which has a speed o f 50 mega bits per second. If one opts for a T-1 line, there will be no problem of speed but it is expensive. An ISDN line costs a little less than Rs. 1 lakh per month and a few companies are providing cable modem connections free of charge. The pros an d cons of the different connections will be discussed in a later article.

On the other hand, if you host a Web site with a professional hosting company, you will have to pay bandwidth charges which are unpredictable. Bandwidth charges are costs incurred for the amount of data uploaded and downloaded from a Web site . A Web site with more hits will have higher bandwidth costs. You still need to register your domain name with a registrar. The registrar then reserves an IP address for your machine, which might look something like (120.45.94.89). This is stored in a domain name server by the registrar and pointed to your machine. The registrar then gives 120.45.94.89 a virtual address of your choosing i.e. www.yourname.com.

On the software part, software such as Microsoft's

Windows 2000 comes with the average PC. This package contains the personal Web server (PWS) and the Internet information server (IIS) which will serve as the Web server. On the WWW, it is ideal to use the IIS as the Web server. The server can be configur ed with a few clicks and the program guides you through the process. This is enough if the business is small and just a portal giving information. In case of database connectivity, Microsoft has products available off the shelf.

Database connectivity is important for large sites where information is stored on databases and one does not want to load the Web server. It is also advisable to have more than one Web server to handle load sharing and act as a back-up. One can use active server pages (ASP) which is the program that talks to the database and this can be handled by an ASP programmer. Once configured, the ASP programs usually do not need to be rewritten unless a different kind of data is loaded on the database or information needs to be displayed in a different format.

Then, of course, you need to be connected to a payment gateway, a procedure with which the average Net-savvy bank will help out.

One might ask why go through this entire hassle when the whole function can be outsourced. The answer: Rising costs. As your Web site grows, the costs will grow too. After a certain level of size it is better to have everything in your backyard a s far as cost goes. For instance, setting up all that was discussed above will cost $3,500 (about Rs. 1.6 lakhs) per month if outsourced and the costs are recurring and increasing.

The author is based in Silicon Valley.