All of the normal prohibitions regarding resale of our services remain in place. For instance you can't use one of our DSL links and attach a terminal server and modems to it to become a commercial ISP.

Also, the basic prices we're offering are for personal, non-commercial, client-side side use. You can't use a basic DSL account to host a web site. If you want to run Internet server applications, go to the "The cost of StarNet server/commercial DSL" section.

Explaining the reasoning and economics behind disallowing server applications on a basic DSL connection calls for somewhat technical explanation.

First, you need to understand the concept of "bandwidth". It is a measure of how much data you can send and receive at any given time.

Take modems for example: A 14.4 modem can send and receive 14.4 kilobits of data in one second. A 28.8 modem can send and receive 28.8 kilobits in one second -- twice what a 14.4 modem can do. So you can say that a 28.8 modem has twice the bandwidth of a 14.4 modem.

Internet service providers (ISPs) have bandwidth too. However, their connections are actual, physical cabling (like phone wires) and are much faster than a modem (1.5 megabits per second and higher).

It is through these connections that ISPs have access to the Internet. In order for things to work smoothly for their subscribers, an ISP needs to have enough bandwidth to handle the needs of all their users at any given time. Otherwise, subscribers will have additional delays when getting or sending information on the Internet.

Bandwidth to the Internet is very expensive, several times more expensive for the same bandwidth used by DSL.

For example, a standard Deluxe DSL connection costs you $20/month. The same speed connection for an ISP to connect to the Internet can cost over $170/month. After factoring in the cost of the equipment and personal needed, the actual cost could easily be twice that.

If an ISP's subscribers use their DSL connection to the full extent all the time, it is potentially losing $300 per subscriber per month. No business could survive that.

There are three solutions:

A major part of what makes the low prices we're delivering available to you is that we're able to count on a certain network latency.

In other words, your DSL circuit is not constantly passing data -- it's not doing anything when you aren't actively doing anything... and that the bandwidth can be used by others.

If a handful people were to put up, say, a pornographic web sites, they would be using the connection constantly. Their usage would equate to potentially 10, 20, or more regular DSL users.

StarNet DSL falls into that fine old Internet tradition -- everyone pulls together and everyone benefits. We also apply the rule of everyone pulling their full weight -- if you want to have a connection that you can use at full capacity all the time, you should also pay the full cost of what you are using.

By the way, what is described above is pretty much standard in the industry -- it's just that some places aren't so up-front about describing the situation.

For normal client side use -- in other words what virtually all of you do today, browsing the web, getting and sending e-mail, reading USENET newsgroups -- the DSL circuit is a perfect vehicle.