Virtual Access Ltd, a new UK company, says it can offer cheaper installation of internet access equipment to small and medium sized businesses in the UK. It intends to sell its LinxSpeed ISDN terminal adapters through internet service providers and, in return, Virtual Access will extract information from ISP databases, for IP addresses and configuration information for the Terminal Adapter. Virtual Access will then mail the equipment to the company where it is plugged in to a server to extract the configuration information. The equipment has a built-in firewall, and uses Domain Host Control Protocol software to ascribe IP addresses to computers on the network. Virtual Access has a patent pending on the technology, and reckons that currently all the ISPs in the UK only have the capacity to install 200 internet connections per day, which would mean that it would take 16 years to wire up all 1.2 million UK small businesses. It says its system can wire them up much more quickly, and save ISPs the installation fees. The system is currently in beta trial with nine ISPs.
