Web-based casinos are sites at which you can play free online casino games directly. It is not necessary to download and run any software from your own computer. Online games require respective browser support and they are mostly represented in the browser plug-ins Macromedia Shockwave, Macromedia Flash, or Java. So, users really must have great bandwidth to load the graphics, animations, and sounds because all these come from the site itself and need the web-browser plug-ins (that the majority of users of internet already use for all kinds of other websites; entertainment sites, online newspapers, etc.).

A very small quantity of casinos allows playing games through a plain HTML interface. These sites graphics are commonly quite inferior to those that provided through down-load based casinos. The speed of games is another huge difference. In general this is hampered by bandwidth traffic, restrictions, etc. Disconnection problems can also be a huge trouble. Generally speaking, the majority of the larger casinos prefer to use download-based software and with these sites you can find a much better choice of games and options. For instance, most, if not ALL, of the sites reviewed by GamblingPlanet.org use download-based software.
Download-based casinos

Download-based casinos are the most popular and common casino sites on the web. Here, users have to download certain software in order to play that casino’s games. After the software installation, it connects to the casino service provider and contact is handled without browser support. SPEED is the main advantage here. The software includes all the graphics and animations that run from the computer in place of the internet.

The only disadvantage, of course, is the initial download and the necessity of the program installation. Some people are also concerned about the danger of downloading a virus or spyware but as you are acquiring software from trustworthy sites and you have a solid anti-virus program, this should not be a problem. Anyway, before downloading any of this software read the fine print and in case you find a thing you do not like, choose another casino - there are lots of casinos out there!

Relatively new Flash’ based software is another type of technology which offers the equal benefits of downloaded software without the download. But, for the time being, most players choose download-based sites. They remain the most popular among the gamblers. It is difficult to beat the benefits such as reliability, better graphics, increased speed, etc. connected with these type of sites.