Durkee Consulting Home “Typical” CAD Manager CAD Manager Tools Notebook Calendar, PDA, Watch Free Internet Access AutoCAD 2005 Sheet Sets Miscellaneous Blog Jokes and Stories Links Quotes Statistics Surveys CAD News More news Send news News on your site	Free and Low Cost Internet Access Yes, that’s right; I’m recommending that you find yourself a free or low cost Internet Service Provider. While I wouldn’t recommend that you support your entire business with free Internet service, it does have its place in your toolbox. The most obvious uses are: Emergency Access and Alternative Remote Access Consider the following scenarios. Catastrophic Communications Failure A catastrophe doesn’t have to be a hurricane or an earthquake to be catastrophic to your business. You’ve heard it over and over before: “Time is money.” If a quote or submittal is delayed there is a cost associated with that delay. Any number of points from your PCs out to the Internet can fail. While we would all like to believe that every point has redundancy, we know it isn’t true, especially behind your own firewall. Having a free or low cost ISP available will keep your business doing business while the network gurus work on solving the problem. Road Warrior in Podunk Imagine yourself on the road, working long hours, scarfing down whatever fast food is available on the right hand side of the road, pouring yourself into your hotel room at night and discovering that the dial up service provided by your high speed ISP back at the office doesn’t have an access number in Podunk. Having a free or low cost dialup service installed on your notebook computer can make your favorite road warriors sing your praises. Resources Hopefully your high speed provider also provides dial up access that can be used in an emergency or remotely with a huge number of POPs. If you need an alternative, consider one of the brands from United Online – either Juno or NetZero. As of this writing, either of these can provide unlimited dialup access for less than $10 per month. Both also provide free dial up accounts with 10 hour per month limits.	Abbreviations ISP Internet Service Provider PC Personal Computer POP Point of Presence Ads
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