Internet Cafe 101

I've been an Internet cafe attendant during my college days. Its been my sideline during those trying years. One of the things I've learn is that there are plenty of things to consider before putting up an Internet cafe.

Working Capital

Just like in any business venture, you need to have a working capital to put up a business. Internet cafe business is not an exception.  On the current context the ideal working capital for Internet cafe is around 150,000 pesos or around $4,000. The said amount would give you around 10 workstations.

Good location

Good location would mean that your place is accessible to people on all walks of life. This is business 101 and getting a good location to put your business is one of the considerations you need to think before putting an Internet cafe.

Ambiance

Most of the Internet cafe I've been with is not quite conducive. We should take into considerations the space in between workstations

Fast Workstations with high video resolution

Most of the computer game nowadays requires high video resolution. Thus if you have a higher video cards and the latest CPUs gamers will promote your cafe.

Good Internet Connections

Ideally internet connections should be fast enough such that your clients will not be bored waiting for page loads. Since most of the games nowadays requires Internet connections you need to have fast connections for Internet gamers to stay on your cafe.

Good Quality LAN and on-line Games

In an Internet cafe business one of  the bread and butter is games. It has the lion share in the revenue of Internet cafe. Computer game enthusiast often comes to a certain cafe. Here they will going to share and enhance their skills. It would be advisable if you have some stats on what games they play. If you don't have the games they've requested you can ask them if they have one. If they don't try to purchase it online.

If possible have the same model of workstations

For maintenance purposes your workstations should have same models. With this, video driver are same all throughout you workstations and you will not have a hard time during maintenance days.

Web Server and Proxy Server

Internet cafe is notoriously known as virus haven. This is because most of the Internet cafe are poorly manage.  Most of the Internet cafe I've been with is not using proxy server at all. No wonder viruses and all forms of computer malwares are present Internet cafe. There are plenty of free linux server today. Some of the best are CENT OS which is clone of the well known RED HAT, UBUNTU LINUX, ORACLE LINUX.  Installation of these servers are quite straight forward nowadays.

Disable USB flash drive by default

Have a dedicated workstation with Linux box installed. Why Linux? Linux is quite immune to viruses and 90% of know virus variants only run on windows environment. Thus, you are quite safe if your dedicated workstation with USB enabled is running on linux. Linux is free OS and there taste – UBUNTU and its derivatives such as linux mint, KUBUNTU the KDE version of UBUNTU.  In fact, I've been using linux mint in posting this blog.

Deep Freeze in Windows OS

Deep freeze has the ability to reinstate your pc to previous state after reboot. Meaning, it can prevent virus in intruding your computer. The current release of deep freeze is in 7 versions and I recommend them.

Net Suite

There are plenty of net suite out in the market today. To mentioned a few easy cafe, cafe suite, netimo. Depending on your taste you can install one of them as your net suite

Virus Scanner for Windows Environment

There is a notion that putting up virus scanner in window box is a waste of time. Think again, if your pc will be hit with worms and you would lose money since reformatting your pc would take some time. And its quite a hassle to reinstall your OS. There are quite few number of good virus scanners that are for free. Here are some of them. Avira, Trend Micro, AVG, Panda, Norton among many others. You can also try others virus scanners such as Kaspersky, Macafee, Symantec these are household names when it comes to virus scanners.

Good Network Administrator

And finally, you need to have a network administrator to monitor the outbound and inbound data of the net cafe. Also, to monitor the health of your network. Remember, poor management would also mean poor cafe.