      For those who are not fortunate enough to have a stable, reliableInternet connection, there are two alternatives — direct dial-up anddedicated connection. Direct dial-up connections are stable. Unfortunately,they are    quite expensive, ranging from five to 15 cents per minute. Inaddition to the cost, direct dial-up connections have limited bandwidth,which reduces the amount of information that can be transmitted to thetrader. The safest, fastest, most secure and reliable method of connectionthat you can use is a frame relay (also known as a fractional Tl)connection. Personally, I would not connect any other way, regardless ofthe performance of my ISP. The reason for this is that when the marketcorrects (like it did at the end of October 1997), most ISPs either failcompletely, or are severely delayed. The Internet traffic caused by the 1.2million on-line investors during that period was so heavy that theinfrastructure of the Internet was completely overloaded. For those who hadaccess to the markets on those days, the profit potential was huge. Forthose who did not have access on those days and could not exit their longpositions, the losses were huge. In fact, given the feedback that Ireceived from traders, the cost of a frame relay connection could have beenpaid for many years over from that one event.