I can speak to this as I used to run a fair-sized local ISP.  We provided
dialup service (analog and ISDN), frame relay, dedicated fractional/full
T1 conections, Web virtual hosting, the whole ball of wax.

The only time your five additional domains will really require significant
effort on his part is during setup and admin time.  There will be five
more domains to set up in DNS, five more domains to add to the Sendmail
config so you can receive email, five new Apache virtual containers to set
up, etc.  This will take some time, and of course any time admin time is
required there will be five times as much work.  Your ISP friend has to do
this himself or pay his employees to do it, so he's certainly entitled to
payment for that.

Now you've got six domains instead of one.  You say they'll take the same
mount of disk and bandwidth as the current one (if that's the case, why
bother??).  But in order for him to effectively run his ISP business, he's
got to monitor that -- more work.  Also, if he's going to give you six for
the price of one, he's now set a precedent -- anyone who finds this out
will feel cheated if they're paying for more than one domain.  Look at it
from his standpoint: He sells a valuable service.  Everyone else pays his
set rate for hosting.  Why shouldn't you?  Just because you know him?
That's a pretty weak argument.  Why would a friend get poorer treatment
from you than a total stranger, whom you would not expect to sell you six
for the price of one?  My in-laws run a grocery store in a small town
about an hour away.  When we visit, we usually stop by the store to stock
up on meat (he runs an outstanding meat department) and some other
groceries.  We pay the same price as anyone else, family or not.  I'd
never even ask for a discount.  Whether it's obvious or not, *every*
product or service does have a cost associated with it, and virtual hosted
domains are no different.

As I said, I used to run an ISP (but I'm feeling much better now).  There
were a *few* people with free dialup accounts, and they performed some
sort of vaulable service for me in return.  One couple had invested money,
one provided regular feedback on connection and service quality.
Employees, of course, got free accounts both as a fringe benefit and to
keep track of problems.  We had *one* web hosting customer who got their
account for free, and they were web developers who continually brought in
more high-dollar accounts, so we actually made money by giving them their
site and some extra attention for free.

If you want to get your sites hosted free, I'd suggest you talk to your
ISP friend and ask how you can make it worth his time and effort by
helping out the operation.  Figure out how much per month it would cost
you, then offer work the tech support phone lines or find some other
recurring value you can provide in return for the service he's providing.
I don't know what you pay per domain, but we also eventually introduced a
lower rate for smaller we sites that required little in the way of
support.

As a final alternative, if you're on a cable modem or DSL service with a
relatively stable IP address, a second-hand machine with Linux (free),
Apache (free), BIND (free), and Sendmail (free) can be set up to host as
many domains as you want.  It will take some time to learn how to do it
and to get things running well, but your ISP friend has already invested
countless hours of his time learning the same thing.  That's how it's
done.  You pay in either money or time and effort (or both) -- take your
pick.

Dale

On Sat, 17 Feb 2001, Intellicorp001 wrote:

> Hi All,
>
>       I've got an aquaintance who's my ISP.  At the moment I'm only hosting
> one domain with him. I'd really like to host 6 domains with him.  He's open
> to deals & my contention is that;   If I have 5 domains which occupy
> (cummulatively) the same disk space & bandwidth as my one current domain,
> why can't I have these 5 additional domains for the same price as the one
> domain I have already ?
>
>      I put this too him & he started giving me some stuff about having to do
> a DNS name lookup or table read every night. So & what ? He'd have to do
> that anyway. Is he just pulling the wool over my eyes or is there really an
> overhead to ISP's to host multiple domains even though cummulatively they
> use the same bandwidth & diskspace as one larger domain ?
>
>    Thanks,
>
>         Wilson.
>
> www.wilsonlogan.com
> (lots of groovy tech stuff in the Deutsches Museum section!)
>
> --
> http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics
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>
>

---
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discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
                -- Isaac Asimov

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