Outsource your Website: an Internet Service Provider can save your company big money.

Over the last couple of years the expansion of the Internet has drastically transformed the way businesses function. Corporate sites that once contained a few pages of information now contain hundreds and sometimes even thousands of pages of data.

These sites require a lot of work. In addition to the constant data input, they need a variety of Web-based applications, an extra-powerful server and a faster, more redundant network. And they cost a lot of money.

That's why you should seriously considering outsourcing your Website by placing it on a server (or servers) of an Internet Service Provider (ISP).

The ISP supplies the server hardware, the high-speed redundant network, the server monitoring, the battery back-up and the rack space. The ISP is responsible for managing the network and ensuring the integrity of the server hardware.

For the small business owner, outsourcing vs. maintaining your site internally has both cost and performance advantages. To run a high-end Website, you need at least one server, redundant leased lines fast enough to handle the traffic and the personnel necessary to manage everything.

Internally hosted sites tend to share and compete for bandwidth with everyday corporate employee data traffic (generated by sending e-mail and Web browsing). What results is a slowing of the corporate Website during peak usage hours of the day--a time when it should be fastest. Outsourcing the hosting to a provider with a powerful network will ensure constant access speeds without competition from other sources.

Server hosting ISPs, commonly known as distributed access ISPs, have multiple connections to multiple Internet backbones. By being multi-homed, these ISPs are able to distribute their traffic across various networks. They are not dependent on any single backbone. Furthermore, a distributed access ISP that runs Border Gateway Protocol routing (BGP4) can redistribute data traffic almost instantaneously if a connection to a backbone fails.

In addition, the top hosting service companies use much faster ether switches instead of ethernet hubs. In the simplest terms, on an ethernet hub only one server can talk at any given moment. This causes data packet collisions and slowdowns. Thus, a server connected to a 100Mb hub is actually sharing that hub with all the other servers connected into the very same hub. A server connected into a 100Mb 24-port hub is actually sharing that 100Mb of bandwidth with 23 other servers.

An ether switch, on the other hand, allows all of the servers to "talk" at the same time. There are no collisions; data moves in and out of the network as fast as possible. Moreover, each server is its own node on the network and receives a dedicated amount of bandwidth. The advanced features of ether switches also make them considerably more expensive. They can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 whereas hubs are a few hundred to $1,000. Make sure to check if your hosting provider uses switches or hubs.

Christopher Wade and Brad Macomber are with Verio Product Management, Parent company Verio is a Silver-level member of the Detroit Regional Chamber.

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