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ISPs for the Little Guy?
jjshoe asks: "While access to the Internet varies greatly, depending on where you are in the USA, I recently went on the hunt for an ISP that provided me the ability to have a 'broadband' link to the Internet. I am looking for would be the ability to lease/rent static IP's, so I could host my own DNS/WWW/E-mail server. I was wondering what ISP fellow Slashdot readers use for themselves, as well as what they pay. I have gotten quotes for $50 a month for a single static IP on top of my monthly DSL fee. This seems slightly outrageous to me. Colocation is not an option as it generally runs $150 a month and does not provide me Internet access. I am open to any other ideas the community might have."
I apologize for patronizing you, but definitely make sure that the ISP you choose does not block ports required for hosting email, dns, or web servers.
I know I once payed Verizon ~$70/month thinking I would host my own site, only to find out they don't allow home website hosting.
tilTrue.info contechtext.info prettypowerful.info twitter.com/frets fb.com/prosody
You're probably going to get a lot of this particular answer (or at least I hope), but if you live in California Omsoft is incredible. Not only do they allow you to run your own server, they encourage it. They are responsive to user requests and very knowledgable. Sure it's only a DSL connection, but my site's been happy about. Good luck!
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Dumbass, this is so obviously not what the original poster is asking about. Jesus what a moron.
Hi,
I want something that's exactly like a T1, except I only want to pay $60 a month. TIA.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
. . . 1&1 hosting is claiming to offer 3 years of hosting free. Since TANSTAAFL, there must be a catch; I just haven't figured it out yet.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Nearlyfreespeech.net, just to pick an example, charges $1 per gigabyte transferred plus $0.02/day for DNS service that includes email forwarding.
You cannot host a site off your own internet connection as cheaply or robustly as a dedicated provider. I don't recommend hosting your own site unless you already need "fancy" service (multiple static IPs, fast upstream) for other reasons.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Check out speakeasy.net. They have really good prices, good servers, and are geek friendly. They even have a 'sysadmin package'.
Check out Speakeasy. I have never come across a single unhappy customer. They allow the customer to use their connection for pretty much anything, even WiFi hot spots. They even offer symetric DSL up to 1.5Mbit.
Try August.Net in the DFW area. They are great!
I am looking to host my OWN dns/mail/www for complete control of what i do, i want to be able to scalably add domains. please read my post again.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Speakeasy has been a very Linux-friendly ISP who has allowed me to host all the services I ever wanted. They are pretty affordable, too, with "plus" packages offering such goodies as 4 additional static IPs, or low-ping goodness for gamers.
I will try not to advertise too much here, but you should try to run your servers at a hosting facility that offers low-cost virtual servers. My company does this starting at $150/year including 3Gig of disk and 10Gig of transfer running "User Mode Linux" w/ RedHat 7.3. We are not alone and there are a number of vendors that can give you small "dedicated" servers for much less than $50/month.
... Plus you can load anything else you want.
There are two "classes" of virtual servers. Companies that offer shared hosting, and companies that offer true "virtual" server. With shared hosting, you don't really have the flexibility of a whole machine. With virtual servers, you get ssh root access into a Linux or BSD system and can load your own packages etc.
The User Mode Linux based servers work very well and are really complete servers with their own dedicated file system, network, and RAM. Other than being small (32Meg of RAM, 32Meg of SWAP, and 3G of disk) that are 100% complete systems running 2.4.22 with gcc, emacs, vi, perl, php, apache, bind,
Our servers are 100% open sitting on dedicated 100Mbit lines with truely public and unfiltered IP addresses. We pre-configure iptables based firewalls, but you can open up whatever you wish.
The downside of true "virtual" servers versus shared hosting accounts is that you have to configure the software yourself. If you don't know how to setup apache and bind, then a complete server is probably not a good idea.
The bottom line is that this lets you use any old DSL/Cable modem line and still have your 100% accessible server on the net.
They give you a static IP, and allow you to host your own mail server, web server, the works...
I've been a pretty satisfied customer over the last three years.
- Static IP is the default.
- They not only allow but encourage running servers. They're even reasonable about secondary DNS and MX pricing.
- Free reverse lookup changes.
- Encourage sharing your connection.
- Don't block ports.
- Provide NTP services on all their local POPs
- Heck they even host game servers on the local POPs
I have no affiliation with Speakeasy other than being a more than satisfied customer. Go check out dslreports.com.I have been a customer of LMI for many years. They are quite geek-friendly. Things may have changed but when I got DSL they didn't even offer DHCP - if you bought an always-on connection you got a static IP. They don't block ports or have funny bandwidth caps either. They will run email/DNS for you or, of course, you can run your own. I don't think they operate outside the SF Bay Area, though.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
In California? Try DSL Extreme. I'm getting 1.5 Mbit downstream, 256 kbit upstream plus one static IP for $65/month. No blocked ports. Additional IPs available at $8/month. I'm running SMTP, DNS, HTTP.. no problems.
Routing is good, just a couple hops from major backbones. I often ping 100ms to the east coast.
No questions asked, they just provide the pipe. Works great, fast installation. I don't work for them or anything, I'm just a satisfied customer.
Pricing varies by local telco and region.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I would like to thank most of you for your honest feedback. I will be checking into speakeasy tomorrow to see what they offer.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
You don't say what part of the country you're in, but Linkline offers pretty good DSL packages.
I'm paying $50/month for 768/128, but I get up to 1.5 downstream easily, I've got a static IP address, and I have their blessing to run whatever servers I want. They even set the reverse DNS on my IP address to my own host/domain name. Additional static IP addresses are $5/month each.
Also, they're small enough that if it goes down or something, once you've shown that you know what you're talking about it's fairly easy to get a sysadmin or network engineer on the line. That's so much nicer than dealing with three levels of tech support in a cube farm somewhere.
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
I have SBC/Yahoo DSL ($65/month). Used to have DirectTV DSL ($49/month). I would still have DTV DSL, but they are out of the business.
So, my SBC DSL account gets me 5 static IP's (I use just one), about 1 megabit down, 128Kbits up, and no blocked ports whatsoever. They don't care what services you run on the line.
I have my own web server (www.pdrap.org), my own e-mail server, and anything else that I want to have.
I can add domains through virtual hosting, or I could make use of the other 4 static IP addresses that I have.
The static accounts do NOT use that PPoE that their dynamic accounts use. My static account does not require a login - it's plain old ethernet coming out of the DSL modem.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
My ISP charges 4$ canadian per month for a static IP... I get mine free, I'm grandfathered.
a t=Virtual+Hosting
:p A google search for "virtual server host" turns up a few places with similar plans.
Seriously though, if you can't afford a dedicated server (80$ at RackShack or ServerMatrix), maybe a virtual server (10$/mth), like here:
http://www.ev1servers.net/english/virtuals.asp
10$ a month, unlimited transfer, 100MB storage space, and it comes with:
One domain name hosted (purchased separately)
Unlimited email accounts
Unlimited email aliases or forwards
Unlimited FTP access
FrontPage 2000 extensions
Unlimited bandwidth usage
CGI, PHP and Server Side Includes
Which seems to be everything you want, though you only get 1 domain name, so it's not really a full DNS server. Additional ones hosted are 2$ per month though, and most registrars like GoDaddy host it for you, and even let you edit the records themselves.
For more info on it, check out here: http://www.ev1servers.net/english/faq/index.asp?c
I'd list some more virtual server providers, but I can't remember any off the top of my head
In the SF Bay Area, look up meer.net. They're more expensive than SBC or Earthfink, but what you get for the price of DSL+hosting compared to the other guys is (besides the usual):
Something you can actually run a server with, like 250MB storage, 10GB transfer per/month, up to 384Kbit/sec upstream, a real router and not a broadband "modem", no PPPoE, support for all operating systems, routed subnets and firewalling by default, extremely minimal restrictions on usage.
The guys running it are very helpful, and know what they are doing. You're not going to get 24/7 support, but you will get a call back within 30 minutes during normal hours. They run FreeBSD and if you want a particular "port" installed on the host machine just ask.
The best part about it, is that it's a "business" class service, even though it's a non-commercial account. You won't be sharing a subnet with 253 napster freaks. In five years with them I've never seen them down once.
Here's the best story I have about them. Last week a coworker was trying to belittle me for paying so much. He said I should go with doteasy.com instead for $7.95. This guy was an intern under my care, so I felt it my duty to set him straight. So I brought up the netcraft uptime page and checked meer net. Looked pretty damn good. A smooth upward slope ever since they switched the front server from IRIX to FreeBSD. Then I pulled up doteasy. You can check for youselves, but I have to warn you, it's not a pretty sight!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
1. Depending on the ISP, you might not be able to obtain more than one IP address w/ your line. Needs two to run DNS.
2. Uplink speed generally sucks, at only around 50KB/s.
Something like virtual (machine) hosting would be a better bet. I am a happy customer of http://www.johncompanies.com/. You need the Linux package to run DNS thou.
They seem resonable so far. http://www.extanthost.com/
I am using comcast cable in the dallas area, and im not too impressed. My connection is down about twice a month, and sometimes the lines get really cluttered and i get insanely slow download rates and gaming pings. My parents pay for it, so im not going to complain to them. If you want the connection for hosting, just google for a web host company. There are thousands who will charge $5 to $10 a month for a dns, web server, and email server like you need.
If Speakeasy is not available, talk to linkline
Yeah but he doesn't want Powweb. He wants to run his own services and server. So your post is absolutely pointless. Are you affiliated with them or something? Because your post reads like a sell.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Speakeasy encourages you to run your own servers on thier dsl lines, a static IP costs $3 or $5 extra a month, and they'll change your reverse dns for ya too. I have never been happier with an ISP than I was with them.
Depending on what you're planning to use it for, I'll just give you some space on my server. No big deal.. Just send me an email. :P
My service is with isomedia http://www.isomedia.com. I pay $22.50/month plus an additional $5 for a static IP on top of my verizon DSL line. No hastles, no problems with servers etc.
The concept of this article is which isp allows you to use them like you should be able to. The internet is becoming more and more commercialized and i want to know what fellow nerds are doing to in-expensively make they're own nich. Not what commercialzed service you think i should dump more money into.
-- botsex is {grep;touch;strip;unzip;head;mount}
Well I run a few sites and a shoutcast station on my cable connection from shaw.ca Im paying about $75CDN for it per month and have a 50gig transfer limit with about 2MbitDL/400+MbitUL speed . Although you are not allowed to run DNS/WWW/Mail servers on all but one of their accounts they dont block any ports and as long as you dont abuse the bandwidth limits they leave you alone. I did decide to go for a business account just to make sure they wouldnt bother me like they might if I was running a redisdential account. I also asked a local LUG if anyone has been contacted about running servers and all replies where that if you dont abuse the system they wont bother you.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I use RR business class for my home connection. $109.95/month for 2 statics in a dmz, 1 meg down, 128k up. It's the cheapest service they have, more bandwidth costs more money, but it is available. I run mail and host for a couple domains (one being the URL above.)
Other than some problems with shit Cisco routers, which they fixed this past Saturday (weekend tech trip to my apartment, for free, can't beat that for service,) I haven't had less than 3 9's downtime in more than a year.
"Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
Get a cage at a colocation facility. Sell all of your stuff, get a sleeping bag and a laptop then move in.
100MB+ internet access and it's only a few $hundred a month, but since you will live there (cm'on -- you're probably on IRC 19 hours a day anyway -- right?) you can eliminate rent.
Just get a few boxes of 'wet naps' -- maybe from your local KFC and you don't need to worry about showering or whatever.
Hey -- where else is it 70 degrees all day every day? Hawaii? San Diego? Who can afford to move there? Plus you would have major geek bragging rights at the local starbucks.
Good luck!
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
"... pushed by some junky."
It is amazing to me that Slashdot commenters become extremely hostile if they don't like something someone else said.
I pay $46.95 a month through Mikrotec which mainly serves Kentucky. They give me a static IP address and all ports are open. Great deal for me.
unfortunatly, here in Sarasota, FL (50 mi. S of Tampa), we don't get speakeasy DSL (anyone know how to twist the arms of speakeasy/verizon to get a connection down here?) I used aplus.net for hosting for over 2 years, $14.95 for basic hosting, no PHP/MySQL or anything fancy, then i learned the stuff and suddenly needed it :-/
grabbed an account with a friend of mine, who runs the local LAN gaming group , and used to run a BBS in town but now runs said group, and manages the network for a locally based furniture company. Has redundant setups (three-four, depending on the config), main server, backup at the other co-owner of the BBS/LAN group's house, and a tertiary connection if necessary on the WiNET link for the furniture store (wireless T1 ;-) )
Pay him the same $15/month, get personal service, all the trimmings on the server, shell access, PHP, MySQL, mail, the works, and a reliable connection, plus it's located 1/4 mile from my house, :)
he uses Internet Junction www.ij.net out of Clearwater, only decent DSL ISP down here (Verizon blocks SMTP/POP access, bastards)
runs $150/mo for a 768/768 SDSL link after you add verizon's charges, pretty shitty if you ask me, but until speakeasy gets around here, it's all we've got.
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
Here in Sandpoint, Idaho I've got DSL. The way they provide it is a bit strange. Verizon handles the transport at $32.50 per month for 768x128 but then you also have to choose from a list of about a dozen ISP's. The ISP I use gives me a static IP for only $22 per month. I think they also give me some mail boxes and http space but I do my own so I wouldn't know.
So for $54.50 per month I've got static IP and 768x128.
I do have numerous problems with my ISP as everything they do is Winblows based. They go down all too often for a variety of reasons. They are also a choke point that keeps me from full bandwidth, I know other people using other providers in the area who get faster service. Then again they're paying $5 to $20 more per month than I am.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
They have decent speeds and allow static IPs / servers but once something goes wrong their support people are completely and totally clueless.
He who has the gold, makes the rules.
The corporations have the money, and thats why they get to tell us how its gonna be.
Any OTHER questions?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
While I'm at it, I can recommend dyndns.org for DNS service. Relatively high but one-time cost; dynamic and static routing; servers are fast and reliable; good / powerful maintenance pages.
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
I've been very happy with Speakeasy, have had 1.1mb SDSL as well as ADSL with them. They allow you to run whatever you want, as long as its legal, with no problems.
Speakeasy.net
Best ISP known to man or beast. Standard $50-60 for 1.5/384 dsl and a static IP. More static IPs are like $2 per month per IP. No blocking, no unreasonable terms of service, no unreasonable outages, excellent service, excellent web service interface. What an ISP *should* be.
Disclaimer: I do not work or recieve compensation from speakeasy. I have been a customer of theirs for 3 years now, and currently enjoy 1.1mbs sdsl home connectivity through their service.
... and has about the best "on-paper" offering. I'm in the same boat. I have my own server(s) at home for hosting my own vanity domains, web servers, email servers, and game servers. Right now I've got a combination of RR (residential, dynamic IP and prohibited to run servers) cablemodem for high speed websurfing and client-side game playing where I don't need fixed IP address and a hobbiest-friendly wireless ISP connection for hosting my servers. Problem is, that I'm paying a total of about $100/month for two broadband providers, and the wireless connection is a bit flakey due to it just being wireless and signal dropouts in bad weather, wind blowing the outdoor antenna around, 18-wheel trucks going down the highway in front of my house reflecting the RF signal out of the Fresnel Zone, etc, etc.
Just reading this AskSlashdot story and seeing all the folks praising SpeakEasy has got me interested in their service, which is now available in my town. I used to have 1.5M/768k ADSL for $60/mo which worked great until my old DSL ISP went bankrupt about a year ago. SpeakEasy is offering 1.5/768 here with 4 fixed ip addrs for $80/month and I'm seriously considering them.
I use Covad at home and they have been reliable.
I recently got my mother-in-law set up on Britsys, and though she hasn't been up for long, they look quite good too--and less expensive than Covad.
In both cases I have a static IP, I know I don't have any blocked ports on Covad, I have to admit I haven't confirmed that for Britsys, but I don't think they block any.
Now if I could only find any decent non-dialup for my parents at 952-472-XXXX...
-kb
Everyone wants to play amateur sysadmin these days. I have to admit, I've been tempted too. It's fun to mess with Your Very Own Server (TM). But when you do the math, it just isn't worth it.
A much better value is virtual hosting, which is getting very cheap these days. By virtual hosting I mean your very own server -- an instance of Linux, BSD or whatever running on a big box via MWare. To you it's exactly the same as running your own box at home, but better. First of all, it's much better connected -- usually with at least 2-3 T1 or better connections to a major backbone -- not some silly upload-capped 128k DSL or cable line. Second, no more hardware worries -- everything is kept running by the hosting company, and all you do is admin your own software. You can even get Microsoft-compatible stuff. Finally, the cost ($20-30/month) is often less than the extra cost of a static IP on your home DSL or cable, and that's not even considering the savings on hardware.
I don't know why anyone messes with home servers anymore, except to satisfy a gearhead fetish.
The master saw the student responding to every unhelpful and offtopic comment on Slashdot.
"Come with me," he said, and led the student outside where the miller was threshing the wheat to separate it from the chaff, so that he could grind the wheat to make flour. The separated chaff was quickly blown away by the wind.
The master rushed in, and began to collect the chaff instead, gathering it into a pile protected from the wind and criticizing it harshly for not being wheat.
"What are you doing?" the miller asked, confused. At that moment, the student was enlightened.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
I'm in Maryland and I get my voice and DSL from Cavalier Telephone. 384k DSL, static IP (you can get more than one for an additional fee, I just run my server on the static one and NAT my other boxen), total cost for voice and data about $65/month including all the taxes and fees. I'm quite happy with it.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I use bestweb.net and they charge about 55$ a month for basic dsl. They charge another 5$ a month for each static IP address. Havent tried the statics but their dsl is fine and the support is good too. Im in Rockland County, New York.
For what it's worth, I'm getting ADSL, 1.5/256, and it comes with a shell account, 2 static IPs, 2 email addresses, 1 GB of Usenet per user courtesy of Giganews, Rhapsody access for music, and a few other bells and whistles. That package alone runs me $59.95 per month plus FUSF, and for an additional $9.95 per month they are also my primary DNS for my domains.
This is the same ISP who, when I was first interested in 2000, asked me if I wanted a shell account to go with my dialup. (I was unable to afford DSL at the time, as where I was living then would only have garnered me SDSL - so I went dialup.)
Expensive? For the package, very, but well worth it - last time I called support it was to ask a trivial question or three, and their network is rock solid. Even then, even their sales people know the difference between TCP and IP for the most part.
This sig no verb.
I've had Earthlink DSL for about two years. I am currently paying $50 a month for the basic residential 1.5Mbps down. I was only supposed to get 256kbps up when I installed it, but it actually clocks at 384kbps. (But note that the basic package offered now only says 128kbps up - not sure what you'd actually get). They offer static IPs for the residential accounts for an extra $15 a month - officially for things like "running your own game server".
Earthlink also have a small business package that's 1.5Mbps / 384kbps + static IP for $79 / month. This is probably what you would want if you were to use them.
I've run an HTTP and FTP server (with a dynamic IP redirect service - dyndns.org), and it worked flawlessly. The only caveat for running your own servers is that outbound mail *must* be relayed through Earthlink's SMTP server - they block outbound port 25 to all other hosts but mail.earthlink.net as an anti-spam measure to prevent open relay abuse. It works and I can still send email from my work address through their servers from home. However, if you run a mailing list you'd want to use something like Yahoo Groups instead.
Earthlink certainly is not *bad* for a giant corporation (they're part of teleco giant Sprint) - the service seems a lot better and more reliable than the DSL service I previously had through Qwest. But I've never had to speak to a human, so I don't know what their tech support is like if I were to have a problem.
If I was starting over, I'd probably see if I could get Speakeasy first, but only because of the more expensive and faster 1.5Mbps / 768kbps service. If you can't get Speakeasy in your area, Earthlink is not a bad 2nd choice.
Here in Seattle I use blarg.net. It's very good. The uptime has been remarkable. It is $50/month for Qwests 640k line. You get 8 routable IPs plus unmetered transfer, which is really nice.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
At home, I've got normal consumer-grade (Time Warner; somewhere around 3mbps/384kbps, $50) cable. The service is dead-solid reliable, and the IP address has never changed.
Oh, sure - it *might*. But dynamic DNS services are easy to set up, and free.
And if you insist on running BIND yourself, there's ways of doing that, too, without bothering your registrar every time you hop IPs or costing you a cent.
Once you've got the DNS issues resolved, the rest (SMTP, HTTP, whatever) is cake.
(If this all seems too "hard" or "unreliable" or "hackish," please feel free to contribute $50/mo to your existing ISP for a static address. Thank you.)
Kid-proof tablet..
I should have you around instead of Consumer Reports.
/.?
Now, can you hunt for ISPs for the rest of
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
NOIP is a dynamic dns provider.. you install client on your end.. it it will send you new IP info back to them.. and your dns will adjust accordingly. The service is free - if you use one of their domains.. not sure how much they charge to host your own domain.. There are other dynamic dns providers out there as well
In Germany, one has to pay approx. 60 Euro/Month for an 768/128 ADSL connection with static IP. A perhaps typical setup there is:
This ISP doesn't block ports, has no objections of you operating your own servers, and is well-connected to major backbones.
Bigger ISPs are generally more reluctant to give you full access to their backbones, but smaller ISPs compete for customers and this is a very important point for many of them.
The biggest issue with this is T-DSL, which disconnects you every 24 hrs, so you have to immediately reconnect if you operate an HTTP, SMTP or DNS server over their link. Most ppp daemons or ppp routers will do this for you automatically. With a static IP, programs won't even notify the disconnect.
While it is trivial to operate your own domain(s) over an ADSL link, I wouldn't recommend it for more than just home usage purposes: You need to provide redundancy through alternative links, multiple servers (at least hot swappable), uninterruptible power supplies, RAID arrays, etc... You also need backup MXes and would need one or more external DNS servers, e.g. at zoneedit.com or dyndns.org. For a very small number of domains/users, this is too costly. You'd prefer to leverage economics of scale by renting a physical or virtual server in a well-connected data center. Of course, YMMV.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
www.cox.net offers Business Cable Broadband with static IPs for about $100/mo. Server allowed. Check to see if they are in your area.
Have you been DaMa9eD today?
check out rackshack
My work also has a T-1 through them. Not only the T-1 connection, but also a full Class C block of IPs, all for the price of -just- the T-1 from anyone else 'round here. Then again, we signed up as the ISP was first formed so I believe we got a wee bit of a deal for -that-. ;)
Very good service, good people, highly recommended. There -are- still good, smaller-scale ISPs out there, sometimes it's a matter of persistence and luck (the people who formed this ISP broke off from our former ISP, due to mergers and changes in company policies. We just happened to catch word of it as it was happening and jump on with them).
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
Speakeasy and Cyberonic are my two recommendations in this area. Speakeasy is definitely the shit, and a server of mine is hosted on a friend's Speakeasy DSL line.
Cyberonic, at least ~Chicago only offers 1.5/768 single static IP connections. The cost is $40/month, but you have to pay upfront for 18 months. You can use it for servers and business as long as it's a residential phone (or the price goes up).
Speakeasy has more options and better service, but Cyberonic was cheaper at 768up. Both, generally, work well.
The parent didn't give his speakeasy nick, or he could've gotten a small credit - even as just a customer. Mine's "XIG" in both cases. You're not obligated to use it, but it doesn't cost you anything.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot