<div align="justify"><p><u><b>Getting Online</b></u> </p><p><b>Monthly bandwidth</b> </p><p>Data is sent back and forth when visitors enter and leave your site. Your monthly bandwidth is the total amount of data transferred from your hosting space to all the visitors' computers. Since bandwidth is a main cost factor involved in hosting, free services limit the bandwidth offered. Yahoo! Geocities offers you a maximum bandwidth of 3 GB per month. </p><p><b>Cheap domains</b> </p><p>Most Netizens would prefer having their own online identity. Domain name registrars allow you to register your preferred name. Offers range from Rs 350 to over Rs 1,000 depending on the service.
The cheapest and probably most reliable of all services is www.net4domains.com. You can register your domain name for just Rs 495 a year. Of course, a 10-year deal for Rs 4,950 will be economical if you wish to maintain a site that you can hand over to your successor.
Search for your domain name. If it's available, book it on the Web site and send a cheque or demand draft to Net4domains as instructed on the site or in the confirmation e-mail that you receive. Your domain will be registered only after your payment is received and will remain active for the registered period only. </p><p><b>Hosting/Storage</b> </p><p>Web space is an expensive commodity. With add-on services such as POP3 mail accounts, most of the service providers rip you off even for a meagre 2 MB of Web space. Cybersitesindia.com is probably one of the cheapest options available. The company charges Rs 850 for 5 MB of space on an NT server or a Win2k server. If you are booking hosting space of 1 GB and above, then the cost per MB slumps to Rs 26. A list of hosting service providers is available in the links section. You can also check out hosting servers located abroad-they could turn out to be cheaper alternatives. </p><p><b>Availability of domain name</b> </p><p>Check whether your choice of domain name is available. Find domain name availability within different domains with any of the registrar sites. For example, enter the domain name of your choice in www.net4domains.com, and click Search. If it is taken, you get a 'whois' link. Click on the link to find out who has registered the site name. </p></div>