Reports/Case studies

Enchaine Informatic is a small supplier of software consultancy and development expertise, based in Whiteley, near Fareham. I work mainly from home and am based in the residential area of Whiteley, not the Solent Business Park, and hence have access to domestic services rather than services which are specifically geared towards businesses.

My search for a broadband service began in August 2002, when I became involved in a project involving a business partner based in the United States and a customer based in Germany and Switzerland. The work involved building an interface to connect the customer’s SAP ERP software to an e-commerce website supplied by the American company, and was going to require me to conduct tests of the software I developed. The tests would have to be run from my own PC, but would require me to connect across the internet, via a Virtual Private Network, to the Swiss/German customer’s network in order to have visibility of both their SAP servers and the server hosting the e-commerce site. Whilst this was perfectly feasible via a dial-up modem, it would be time-consuming, both in terms of how long it would take to get a connection and in the speed of the connection when transferring data.

My first port of call was BT, whose website told me broadband was not available in my postcode area. I did not look at NTL at this point, as I had spoken to them about a year before, and had discovered that I could only get broadband off them if I signed up for cable TV and a phone service. Since I already had Sky Digital and two BT phone lines, this did not seem a particularly attractive option. Instead of NTL, I looked at a number of smaller local companies who offer various broadband solutions. On inquiring at one of these companies, I discovered why it was that BT could not offer me broadband. Apparently, my phone connection to the local exchange runs over fibre-optic cables, rather than copper wires. This ought to mean it was eminently suitable for high data-rate services like broadband. However, BT’s ADSL broadband service was only available over copper wires (I don’t know if this is still the case). This also meant that no other service provider could sell me a broadband service over my phone lines.

I left the matter on one side for a couple of months, while I did the work for my customers, putting up with a dial-up connection for testing my software. (For anyone who is interested, the SAP front-end, SAPgui, works very well over a dial-up network connection.) I eventually decided to try NTL. My first inquiry discovered that they were planning to launch a business broadband service from January 2003. That was in the future at the time when I was looking, but it was at least a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Then I received an advert through the post from NTL in which broadband was offered, with no mention of having to buy cable TV or a phone line. I contacted them and was told, yes, they now offered broadband as a stand-alone service. Great! I signed up immediately, and the service was installed at the beginning of December 2002. (It runs over a cable TV fibre-optic network, by the way, so I don’t know why BT had a problem with this technology.) For a small software development company, an always-on internet connection gives us many benefits. We can make far easier use of the internet as a research and marketing tool. We can connect with clients’ networks far more easily, to enable us to work remotely or deliver solutions and documents electronically. Even email is easier and smoother when there is no connection delay. I have my Outlook software set to check my email every 10 minutes, so it’s almost like having Microsoft Exchange Server without the expense. We also have the option of hosting our own website or a related service, if we choose to do so in the future.

There is a down-side, though. Firewall software is a must, to prevent unauthorised access to, and use of, our systems. We use two forms of security: a broadband router (which hides our internal network addresses from the outside world and, as an extra benefit, permits more than one PC to share the connection) and ZoneAlarm Pro firewall software just in case someone gets past the router. Anyone who uses broadband would be well advised to get some firewall software, at the very least, at www.zonelabs.com website, such software can be downloaded free of charge.