A First in the Area.

BerkshireNet was the first Internet Service Provider in Berkshire County to offer Virtual Solutions to its customers. In fact, we've been doing it since day one, when we opened our doors in 1995. As such, we have more experience in Virtual Solutions than any other Berkshire County ISP. We are also the first locally based entity to offer Secure Commerce Solutions through an SSL server.

We'll Fool Your Clients and Save You Money.

A Virtual Solution gives your company the appearance of having its own dedicated Internet Presence, when in reality, it's located at an ISP or Web Presence Provider (WPP) on a shared server. The benefit of doing it this way is that you save more than $100,000 the first year alone. Also, since you'll be using your own domain (www.yourname.com) and dedicated IP addresses, it's difficult to tell that you're on a shared server as opposed to a dedicated Internet Presence. In the end you'll appear to have your own server.

 Of course, if you want a true Internet Presence, we can provide that for you, too. You'll probably end up spending $1,000 per month or more for a full T1 to the Internet (no matter where you go), a minimum of $40,000 a year on a competent administrator, and at least $15,000 on a good router, decent network equipment and a decent server. (We told you so.)

We Rock, Too.

All of BerkshireNet's Virtual Servers and Virtual Solutions are served off of powerful Sun Sparc servers running Solaris. Sun Hardware was designed for one thing only: to run the Solaris UNIX operating system. The Solaris operating system has the best implementation of TCP/IP (the protocol the Internet speaks) in the universe and was specifically designed to handle the type of I/O intensive applications that an Internet server must endure. (This is probably why there are very few video games available for Solaris.)

 To top it all off, we run Apache server software on our non-secure sites and Apache Stronghold on our secure sites. Apache is the best and most feature packed web server package in the universe (we like this word) and it serves over 45% of all the pages on the Internet. As a BerkshireNet Virtual Server customer, you'll witness Apache's versatility first hand, because you'll be able to configure your own virtual server to taste, or accept our default configuration.

We Don't Bite Web Designers.

Many Web Designers or HTML Authors choose to host their clients' sites at BerkshireNet because we're flexible. By default, we try to carry a rich software compliment (PHP, MySQL, FrontPage Extensions, Perl4 and 5, C compilers, Java tools, etc) and default Virtual Server configuration to suit everyone's needs. Once in a while, a Web Designer or user has a special request. Our relationship with our customers is such that you can get many reasonable special requests taken care of without any red tape. Need a MIME Type? No problem. Need referrer logging? No problem. Need URL remapping? Help yourself. Need a Quake Apache module? We'll talk.

The Virtual Server Solution.

All BerkshireNet Virtual Servers come with the following:

• Your own domain (www.yourname.com) (InterNIC Fees excluded).
• Virtual E-Mail: 1 E-Mail (POP3) account (you@your-name.com)
• Telnet access to the UNIX development environment.
• Unlimited updates via FTP
li> Private CGI bin directory with access to our public CGI library
• 20 Megabytes of space
• 1 Gigabyte of transfers per month. A $40 fee is charged on each additional gigabyte transferred so that we may ensure maximum bandwidth availability.

Price: $20 per month, one time $20 setup (linked domains to the same account are $15-5/month, one time $20-$10 setup - prices vary depending on options). Network Solutions charges $70 for 2 years to have a domain on the Internet. We can complete your domain registration for you, with no additional cost above this as long as the domain is hosted with us. If a domain we registered for you is not hosted with us, there will be a $25 service fee. See our Accessories section for add-ons, such as FrontPage extensions support.

The Secure Server Solution.

BerkshireNet hosts a secure server running Apache Stronghold on a dedicated machine. With our secure server option, it is possible to do on-line commerce over the Web. The secure server will encrypt the session between the client's browser and your web site using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) so that you can communicate securely with the client and even accept credit cards on-line. Our Secure Server Solution comes with the following:

• A Virtual Server site hosted on our non-secure server
• 10 Megs of Space on our Apache Stronghold SSL server for secure placement of order forms and other sensitive data.

A typical application of our Secure Server Solution would be to host your main Web site on our non-secure server, and link your order forms to your pages on your Secure Virtual Server for order processing. Our Secure Server Solution is virtual, meaning the site placed on the secure server will be at your own domain (typically stronghold.yourdomain.com).

The cost for a Virtual Server Solution is $25 per month plus a one time $50 setup fee. 

Digital Certificates

 In order to use establish an SSL session with a client's browser, it is necessary to obtain a Digital Certificate from a Certificate Authority such as VeriSign. A Digital Certificate assures the client that you are who you say you are. There is an extra cost for a Digital Certificate, which is charged to you by one of the Certificate Authorities noted above. It is possible to host a secure site without a Digital Certificate, however, a warning will be displayed to the client upon connecting to your site.

 BerkshireNet is pleased to be a member of the VeriSign Hosting Program. Customers who chose to obtain a Digital Certificate through VeriSign can receive extra assistance through BerkshireNet.

Shopping Carts

 BerkshireNet is also a ShopSite Commerce Service Provider.  ShopSite provides not just a shopping cart, but also innovative merchandising tools, comprehensive e-commerce capabilities, and other industry-leading tools that grow as your business does.  ShopSite software pricing varies by the number of products you wish to put online.
 

The Virtual E-Mail Solution.

Virtual E-Mail is included with Virtual Web Server Solution, but is also available as a separate option for those who do not wish to host a web page. Virtual E-Mail allows you to receive E-Mail at your own domain name through BerkshireNet's servers (you@yourdomain.com). This solution is priced at $9.95 a month with a one time $10 setup. We will register your domain free of charge, but you will have to pay InterNIC fees(currently $70 for 2 years). 

The Virtual Mailinglist

At BerkshireNet, you can have a mailing list hosted with Majordomo at your own domain. With this option, you have the full configurability of the Majordomo Mailinglist software. Each message is sent to listname@your-domain.com and messages sent to mailinglist subscribers is mailed from list-owner@your-domain.com. This is available as a separate option, and comes with Virtual E-Mail (see above). The price is $0.005 cents per E-Mail or $15 per month, whichever is more. There's a one time $10 setup fee. We will register or transfer your domain if needed, but you must pay the InterNIC domain fees (currently $70 for 2 years on a new registration). 

Accessories

If require more of a certain option than a package provides, we have the following add-ons available:

• Frontpage Extension Support: FREE!
• Additional Space: 5 Megs, $5 a month.
• Additional POP3 accounts: $5 a month per 3 extra email addresses.
• PHP support: FREE!
• MySQL Database Support: $10 per month, $20 setup. (This includes 10mb of storage for your DB. Additional storage space is available. This also includes PHPMyAdmin setup for your account.)
• Domain Parking: FREE! $10 setup.
• Simple Domain DNS: $10 per month, $10 setup. (This does not include mail to be setup for the domain. It simply makes the page available to the web.)
• Auto-Responders: $5 per month each, $5 setup.