Recommendations for Internet cafe.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Zotin Khuma
  • Start date Start date
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Zotin Khuma

A friend wants me to help set up a small Internet cafe and I'd
appreciate some thoughts on the hardware configuration. We'd like to
economise where possible, but avoid short-sighted penny-pinching. The
target is to avoid needing serious upgrade for at least 2 years,
preferably longer. We don't have broadband here, but the possibility
of its becoming available has to be kept in mind. He'll start out with
half a dozen customer machines and a server.

First thoughts -
Athlon XP 2000+
Asrock K7VM4 (S3 Unichrome 3D IGP)
128MB PC333 DDR
40GB Seagate Barracuda
17" non-full flat monitor

Is this good enough or should we go for something like a 2400+, 256MB,
better mobo/graphics, etc. ? Anyone using the K7VM4's on-board LAN ?
Specific recommendations, comments, criticism will be much
appreciated.

Zotin
 
A friend wants me to help set up a small Internet cafe and I'd
appreciate some thoughts on the hardware configuration. We'd like to
economise where possible, but avoid short-sighted penny-pinching. The
target is to avoid needing serious upgrade for at least 2 years,
preferably longer. We don't have broadband here, but the possibility
of its becoming available has to be kept in mind. He'll start out with
half a dozen customer machines and a server.

First thoughts -
Athlon XP 2000+
Asrock K7VM4 (S3 Unichrome 3D IGP)
128MB PC333 DDR
40GB Seagate Barracuda
17" non-full flat monitor

Is this good enough or should we go for something like a 2400+, 256MB,
better mobo/graphics, etc. ? Anyone using the K7VM4's on-board LAN ?
Specific recommendations, comments, criticism will be much
appreciated.

Zotin
Click to expand...

I'd go with an nForce2 motherboard for the better video
performance. Just about any onboard LAN is going to be fine
for 100Mb connections. No point in an XP2400 really, unless
you expect to be building gaming boxes. Use the $ saved to
buy good heatsinks with large/quiet/low-RPM fans, which will
reduce need to service for fan replacement, clean out dust,
and be quieter. In other words, just about any cheap
heatsink with copper base and 80x25mm 2200 RPM fan.

Put more memory in the boxes, 128MB isn't enough for much of
anything these days, particularly with Win2K/XP/etc. 256MB
is a good starting point, and might as well make it PC3200
(DDR400), as the price-difference is negligable, you're just
getting memory guaranteed to have higher margin.

As for upgrades, it really depends on what kind of
functionality you want to provide. Even an old Celeron 800
box will run office, internet, email. For only those uses
you'd never have to upgrade, until the parts fail or are
broken, etc.
 
Zotin said:
A friend wants me to help set up a small Internet cafe and I'd
appreciate some thoughts on the hardware configuration. We'd
like to economise where possible, but avoid short-sighted
penny-pinching. The target is to avoid needing serious upgrade
for at least 2 years, preferably longer. We don't have
broadband here, but the possibility of its becoming available
has to be kept in mind. He'll start out with half a dozen
customer machines and a server.
Click to expand...

I presume the primary purpose is net access. Bear in mind that a
56.6k link distributed 6 ways means that throughput may well drop
to the equivalent of an 9k or so link. This may lead to heavy
customer annoyance. Any two users accessing pages simultaneously
cuts it to a 28k link, and that is very likely to happen.
 
A friend wants me to help set up a small Internet cafe and I'd
appreciate some thoughts on the hardware configuration. We'd like to
economise where possible, but avoid short-sighted penny-pinching. The
target is to avoid needing serious upgrade for at least 2 years,
preferably longer. We don't have broadband here, but the possibility
of its becoming available has to be kept in mind. He'll start out with
half a dozen customer machines and a server.
Click to expand...

I'd hold off untill you get broadband. 56K shared between even 2 machines is
pushing it.. letalone 6 ! (fair chance you'll have at least 2 or 3 people
trying to load a page simultaneously, and they will get very frustrated at
it being so slow)

Regards,
Chris
 
kony said:
I'd go with an nForce2 motherboard for the better video
performance. Just about any onboard LAN is going to be fine
for 100Mb connections. No point in an XP2400 really, unless
you expect to be building gaming boxes. Use the $ saved to
buy good heatsinks with large/quiet/low-RPM fans, which will
reduce need to service for fan replacement, clean out dust,
and be quieter. In other words, just about any cheap
heatsink with copper base and 80x25mm 2200 RPM fan.

Put more memory in the boxes, 128MB isn't enough for much of
anything these days, particularly with Win2K/XP/etc. 256MB
is a good starting point, and might as well make it PC3200
(DDR400), as the price-difference is negligable, you're just
getting memory guaranteed to have higher margin.

As for upgrades, it really depends on what kind of
functionality you want to provide. Even an old Celeron 800
box will run office, internet, email. For only those uses
you'd never have to upgrade, until the parts fail or are
broken, etc.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Kony.
Yes, I think it makes sense to put in 256MB PC3200 each. I thought an
XP 2000+ is quite OK, but I wanted to make sure I'm not out of touch
with current standards, living way out here in this isolated region.
Lower CPUs aren't available and Semprons are more expensive.

Re the video, for quite some time now, I've been using only nForce,
nForce2 IGP, low to mid-range FX cards, with only an occasional
dabbling with other onboard gfx. Does it really make a significant
difference for Internet surfing ?

I've used a couple of dozen Biostar M7NCG-400 mobos with nForce2 IGP.
I'm quite satisfied with it but here it costs about 35 USD more than
the ASrock board I mentioned. Is the difference in video worth it -
for Internet use ? This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one as
I'm not familiar with low-end IGPs.

You mentioned gaming boxes. This friend also wants to install some
gaming machines. He can't afford a high-end setup with 6800 cards.
Probably something like FX5700. Local standards aren't very high. But
I'm in a bit of a dilemma because things seem to be at a transitional
stage - 32/64-bit, AGP/PCI-X. We can't go high-end, but don't want to
set up something that'll start to look stale in 6 months.

Some advice and suggestions here will also be much appreciated.
 
Yes, I think it makes sense to put in 256MB PC3200 each. I thought an
XP 2000+ is quite OK, but I wanted to make sure I'm not out of touch
with current standards, living way out here in this isolated region.
Lower CPUs aren't available and Semprons are more expensive.

Re the video, for quite some time now, I've been using only nForce,
nForce2 IGP, low to mid-range FX cards, with only an occasional
dabbling with other onboard gfx. Does it really make a significant
difference for Internet surfing ?
Click to expand...

Surfing will be least effected, but nForce2 is a faster
chipset overall too, and it doens't hurt that the driver
package is integrated, that you can just go to nVidia's
website and get newest driver with exception of any
special/different features. If you happened upon a GOOD
non-nForce2 board for cheap it might make sense but if the
nForce2 boards are nearly same price they might as well be
used.
I've used a couple of dozen Biostar M7NCG-400 mobos with nForce2 IGP.
I'm quite satisfied with it but here it costs about 35 USD more than
the ASrock board I mentioned. Is the difference in video worth it -
for Internet use ? This is a genuine question, not a rhetorical one as
I'm not familiar with low-end IGPs.
Click to expand...

For that price difference it's not worth it, except that i
have no experience with the ASrock board. Generally they
have video performance similar to an OEM nVidia TNT2 (full
original TNT2, not the M64/Vanta version of TNT2).

You mentioned gaming boxes. This friend also wants to install some
gaming machines. He can't afford a high-end setup with 6800 cards.
Probably something like FX5700. Local standards aren't very high. But
I'm in a bit of a dilemma because things seem to be at a transitional
stage - 32/64-bit, AGP/PCI-X. We can't go high-end, but don't want to
set up something that'll start to look stale in 6 months.
Click to expand...

Gaming boxes always look stale in a few months.
Total buget must be made, for each $ increase in budget
there's usually something better that could be substituted.
The 6800 and 6600 cards may upset the pricing models of the
FX56/7/8/900 cards, a second look at prices at time of
purchase might better reveal the best cost tradeoff. In
general an FX5700 will play yesteryear's games fine but
isn't going to be very good with the most modern and future
3D games. Then again, if that's all the budget allows it's
a lot better than any integrated video. If the FX5900XT
drops below $150 you might consider those instead, but then
that may be near where a 6600 starts in price too,
eventually... timing is everything with video cards.
 
I presume the primary purpose is net access. Bear in mind that a
56.6k link distributed 6 ways means that throughput may well drop
to the equivalent of an 9k or so link. This may lead to heavy
customer annoyance. Any two users accessing pages simultaneously
cuts it to a 28k link, and that is very likely to happen.
Click to expand...

Agreed, if this is going to be attempted with any
lower-speed service there ought to at least be a very
aggressively set up (rules, not necessarily machine
performance) caching proxy server.
 
CBFalconer said:
Who? For what? What guys?
Click to expand...

To respond to the last few replies in one go :
I'm painfully aware that a 56k line shared between several machines
can be very frustrating. Not only that, but the sole ISP here provides
inadequate bandwidth so that download speeds sometimes drop well below
0.5 K/s (about 5Kbps) even for single use, though we do get 4 to 4.5
K/s on a very good day.

Still, Internet cafes have been doing a reasonably good business for a
few years. Customers have learned to live with the often dismal speeds
because there's no alternative. Yes, I've been considering a bridged
connection with two phone lines.

BTW, what are dial-up tariffs like in other countries ? Here it's
about 5 US cents per hour plus phone usage charges which work out to
about 50 US cents an hour - total 55 cents/hr. More recently, the
phone company (which is also the ISP) has introduced a dedicated line
for Internet use. It's a 64K dial-up, free initial installation, and a
fixed rental charge of about 8 USD a month with zero phone usage
charge. The 5 cent/hr internet charge remains the same. How does this
compare with your country ?
 
CBFalconer said:
Who? For what? What guys?
Click to expand...

To respond to the last few replies in one go :
I'm painfully aware that a 56k line shared between several machines
can be very frustrating. Not only that, but the sole ISP here provides
inadequate bandwidth so that download speeds sometimes drop well below
0.5 K/s (about 5Kbps) even for single use, though we do get 4 to 4.5
K/s on a very good day.

Still, Internet cafes have been doing a reasonably good business for a
few years. Customers have learned to live with the often dismal speeds
because there's no alternative. Yes, I've been considering a bridged
connection with two phone lines.

BTW, what are dial-up tariffs like in other countries ? Here it's
about 5 US cents per hour plus phone usage charges which work out to
about 50 US cents an hour - total 55 cents/hr. More recently, the
phone company (which is also the ISP) has introduced a dedicated line
for Internet use. It's a 64K dial-up, free initial installation, and a
fixed rental charge of about 8 USD a month with zero phone usage
charge. The 5 cent/hr internet charge remains the same. How does this
compare with your country ?
 
I'm painfully aware that a 56k line shared between several machines
can be very frustrating.
Click to expand...
Still, Internet cafes have been doing a reasonably good business for a
few years. Customers have learned to live with the often dismal speeds
because there's no alternative. Yes, I've been considering a bridged
connection with two phone lines.
Click to expand...

All internet cafe's there still use dialup ? You can't get other forms of
broadband like ISDN or satellite ?
Bridging or some form of load balancing between multiple lines would work..
say 3 lines, giving theoretcial 28K per machine.

BTW, what are dial-up tariffs like in other countries ?
Click to expand...

Here in Australia: 25 cents per dial-in (local call), and $25 unlimited
hours. Pre-paid is a little under $1 per hour.

Regards,
Chris
 
Zotin said:
.... snip ...

BTW, what are dial-up tariffs like in other countries ? Here it's
about 5 US cents per hour plus phone usage charges which work out to
about 50 US cents an hour - total 55 cents/hr. More recently, the
phone company (which is also the ISP) has introduced a dedicated line
for Internet use. It's a 64K dial-up, free initial installation, and a
fixed rental charge of about 8 USD a month with zero phone usage
charge. The 5 cent/hr internet charge remains the same. How does this
compare with your country ?
Click to expand...

Very nice. That should allow 1 line per machine for the cafes.
BTW, what country is 'here'?
 
Skeleton Man wrote: (** and deleted attributions **)
.... snip ...


Here in Australia: 25 cents per dial-in (local call), and $25
unlimited hours. Pre-paid is a little under $1 per hour.
Click to expand...

A poor balance IMO. That encourages maintaining an idle
connection. Assuming that fee is per month, 10 dials per day would
triple the monthly bill. So there is a healthy incentive to simply
hold the connection.
 
A friend wants me to help set up a small Internet cafe and I'd
appreciate some thoughts on the hardware configuration. We'd like to
economise where possible, but avoid short-sighted penny-pinching. The
target is to avoid needing serious upgrade for at least 2 years,
preferably longer. We don't have broadband here, but the possibility
of its becoming available has to be kept in mind. He'll start out with
half a dozen customer machines and a server.

First thoughts -
Athlon XP 2000+
Asrock K7VM4 (S3 Unichrome 3D IGP)
128MB PC333 DDR
40GB Seagate Barracuda
17" non-full flat monitor

Is this good enough or should we go for something like a 2400+, 256MB,
better mobo/graphics, etc. ? Anyone using the K7VM4's on-board LAN ?
Specific recommendations, comments, criticism will be much
appreciated.

Zotin
Click to expand...

I'd up the RAM to 512M, 128M is simply not adequate, 256M is the bare
minimum. For your application the 40G drive is probably OK but it's a
little small by modern standards. A single platter in a current generation
disk drive is 100G, a 40G drive is based on old technology. While the
Athlon XP 2000+ is fine for your application there is hardly any price
difference between a 2000+ and a 2400+, I'd spend the extra US$8 on the
faster processor.

As for software, use Linux don't even consider Windows XP. Linux comes
with everything you need and it also includes a caching proxy server
(Squid), mail servers, DNS servers and ftp servers. Set up one of your
systems as a server using the caching name server and the a DNS server.
You won't have to worry about viruses, which will cripple your Windows
machines, and of course Linux is free so you can spend the US$170 per
machine on more memory. I'd recommend either Mandrake 10.0 or Fedora Core
2. Because you are on dial up it will be really painful to download the
ISOs (although it can be done) so your best bet would be to buy CDROMs
from http://www.linuxcentral.com. The Fedora Core CDs cost US$9, Mandrake
10.1 Community costs $US12. Also I'd download Firefox and use that as the
browser on your systems.
 
Zotin Khuma:
A friend wants me to help set up a small Internet cafe and I'd
appreciate some thoughts on the hardware configuration.
Click to expand...

Tell him to lease a couple of relatively low end (~2.5Ghz) machines.
 
Here in Australia: 25 cents per dial-in (local call), and $25
A poor balance IMO. That encourages maintaining an idle
connection. Assuming that fee is per month, 10 dials per day would
triple the monthly bill. So there is a healthy incentive to simply
hold the connection.
Click to expand...

$25 unlimited monthly has a 4 hour session limit, but no idle disconnect..
pre-paid by the hour you can stay online 24/7 if you wish.. paying over $150
a week to do so..

Fortunately I got ADSL a few months back, so I don't have to worry about
dialup.. would be nice if SDSL was available..

Regards,
Chris
 
As for software, use Linux don't even consider Windows XP. Linux comes
with everything you need and it also includes a caching proxy server
(Squid), mail servers, DNS servers and ftp servers. Set up one of your
systems as a server using the caching name server and the a DNS server.
Click to expand...

Personally I like FreeBSD for such tasks, but any *nix does the job really..

Even simpler, use E-Smith (Mitel SME Server).. linux distro with a very
simple step by step config.. (answer a few questions, type in a few numbers,
and you're ready to go).. which is excellent for a newbie..

Regards,
Chris
 
BTW, what are dial-up tariffs like in other countries ? Here it's
about 5 US cents per hour plus phone usage charges which work out to
about 50 US cents an hour - total 55 cents/hr. More recently, the
phone company (which is also the ISP) has introduced a dedicated line
for Internet use. It's a 64K dial-up, free initial installation, and a
fixed rental charge of about 8 USD a month with zero phone usage
charge. The 5 cent/hr internet charge remains the same. How does this
compare with your country ?
Click to expand...

USA. Unlimited from $5 a month and up. I have DSL 762K, unlimited, as part of a
phone package. Right now there are a couple of companies that have unlimited DSL
for $29.95 a month. I live in a small town that has only one DSL provider.

They, the Gov't, are trying to pass an Interent tax, mostly on emails I believe.
The funny part is they want to give it to the UN. What a crock.

Good luck with your cafe.

Steve
My real email address is dealsgalore[A-T]earthlink.net

http://www.cheap-land.com
 
They, the Gov't, are trying to pass an Interent tax, mostly on emails I believe.
The funny part is they want to give it to the UN. What a crock.
Click to expand...

What brand of aluminum foil do you use to line your hat?
 
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