Internet connectivity and a web presence are essential business tools for most companies. However, guaranteed levels of service are only available with the more expensive packages, so it's important to realise that it's mostly down to you, the customer, to make plans in case there are outages or other problems.

When moving, for example - either physically or from one provider to another - there are all sorts of things that can go wrong. As I discovered recently, while helping a couple of local companies re-locate to a shared office.

On the plus side the basic connectivity went pretty smoothly and it took just a few hours to get the networks re-located, consolidated and connected to the web. But then we discovered the first problem - a direct result of the two businesses wanting to share a single internet connection.

This required new web hosting agreements rather than relying on free web space bundled as part of the previously separate connectivity services. A simple task, arranged well in advance, with the same ISP. Despite which, come the moving date, the sites stopped working.

OK, those responsible for planning the move should have realised it would happen. The service provider duly updated its DNS servers to point to the domain names of new blank holding pages on the date requested. And fixing it wasn't difficult - we just had to locate the source code and upload it to the new hosts. But it would have been nice if the ISP had warned of this when the order was placed or, better still, offered some kind of migration service.

Of greater concern, however, was the lack of advice about how the move would affect email systems. Particularly in the case of one of the firms, which hosts its own public email server. It scheduled the move for a Friday to allow the associated DNS updates to propagate over the weekend, ready for work first thing on Monday.
Again, those responsible should have thought this through more carefully, but they assumed the ISP would handle the DNS updates automatically. But such changes needed to be requested separately and by the time the necessary fax was dispatched the support department had closed for the weekend. And that, in turn, meant it wasn't until late the following Monday that messages finally started to trickle in.

On the plus side nothing got lost, the ISP held incoming messages on its backup servers until the DNS updates were complete. But a little hand-holding wouldn't have gone amiss. It can't be that hard to co-ordinate such changes and it wouldn't have cost a lot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not simply ISP-bashing; and some providers are better than others. But take care when moving connectivity or hosting services. Take nothing for granted, and expect to have to manage the process yourself. That way you'll be prepared.