On 4 Jun 99, at 10:02, Alan Bentley wrote:

> 1. 20.00 a month or less
> 2. 15 - 20 megs of space
> 4. E-mail acct. & forwarding

  This combination could be difficult to find; the ISPs I've seen who include
web space with their $20/month accounts typically only provide about 5MB.
You *may* find one who will cut you a special deal for the space you need,
based on (a) use of the account for email only (preferably forwarding) so you
never/rarely tie up a modem, and (b) your non-profit status -- they may be
able to write something off against their taxes for this.

> 3. Support for Front Page 98

  Most ISP web servers seem to provide this.

> 5. 99% Uptime

  There are two kinds of uptime/QoS ("Quality of Service") criteria:  (a) easy
to measure, easy to meet; and (b) critical, 99.6% to 99.9% or more, willing to
pay a premium for.  "99% and we're on a tight budget" is neither; ISPs who take
it seriously may prefer not to talk to you, especially since outages can be
caused by factors beyond their control.
  How crucial is it that the site be accessible at 3 in the afternoon?  At 3 in
the morning?  Weekdays?  Weekends?
  Since you don't have the budget for "critical" uptime, you need to work out
what level of outages you would find intolerable.  Your metric has to involve
more than just a number -- is that "99% of clock time" or "99% of connection
attempts must succeed" -- could be very different!
  Make it clear that you understand that some outages may not be the ISP's
fault, but also make it clear that you expect a good ISP to minimize the
effects of those third-party outages, by (for instance) multi-homing their
network.

> 6. DNS registration

  Most ISPs will take care of everything but the actual money -- and many will
act as a go-between for that, too.

> 7. Looking for a reliable company that will still be here in 5 years.

  I don't know if anybody in the ISP business can promise you that.  Mine has
changed hands twice in the last 24 months -- although my service has not
(knock wood!) been affected.


David G

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