Starting an Online Business All-in-One For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Connectivity: Today's Internet Options and More

Considering the variety of Internet service choices you have and the number of providers in business, now is certainly a great time to start an online busi-ness. You can select a plan that truly meets your needs and doesn't break the bank. One area that you should not skimp on for your online business is your Internet service. After all, it (along with hosting for your site) is the backbone of your business.

Here are some of your connection options:

• Dial-up: Using a dedicated phone line and modem, dial-up was once the most common method of accessing the Internet. It's now considered quite limiting with its poor modem-transaction quality and slow 56 Kbps connection speed. The advantage that remains is price: A dial-up provider often charges less than $10 a month for service. One of the biggest drawbacks of dial-up is that it is not conducive to handling today's common high bandwidth-intensive traffic, in support of videos and online game playing, for example. Unless you still live in a rural area where other connection options are limited (or nonexistent), we encourage you to pull the plug on dial-up!
• Broadband: A very high-speed Internet broadband connection can be as much as 70 times faster than dial-up. Broadband works by carrying many different channels of data over a single wire, or source. The continued growth in e-commerce is credited to the ever-expanding number of consumers who have access to a broadband connection in their ...