Subject: Internet Access Provider FAQ
The Inet-Access Frequently Asked Questions List
By David H Dennis (david@freelink.net)
#html
The Internet Provider FAQ is kindly sponsored this month by
And
And
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The FAQ was last updated on 22 September 1998
> Important Note
If you're downloading a text version of this document from
someplace or other, please note that you can always get the
latest copy from http://www.amazing.com/ . Just follow your
nose, and feel free to check out our other amiably eccentric
web creations and resources.
If you're just thinking about being an ISP, and you don't really know
if this is the business for you, check out my advice for new ISPs at
http://www.amazing.com/internet/advice.html .
I now work for Freelink Communications, an ISP that now offers free
advertising-based Internet access. You can visit us at
http://www.freelink.net .
If you need a web site designed, please visit my web design page at
http://www.amazing.com/new . If you want to roll your own, you may
also be interested in my web design FAQ at
http://www.amazing.com/web-faq .
Before I got my own connectivity, Avi Freedman of Net Access of Philadelphia
was very generous in bailing me out when I was short on connectivity.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank him for standing by me.
Check out what he has to offer at http://www.netaxs.com/ .
> Introduction
Welcome to the Internet Access Provider FAQ, 9,575 lines (and counting!) of
information on how to become an Internet service provider. This is an
amazingly broad subject, covering everything from politics to sexual
mores to the care and maintenance of a large Unix site. We'll meet
wanton women and straightlaced crusaders, lovers of Macs and of Suns,
and even the occasional Windows NT user peering nervously in our
direction.
Yes, this is where we meet the traffic cops and maintenance people of
the Information Superhighway, as they begin to make their first
struggling appearances. They all have their idea of what the net is
to be; about all they have in common is that they know it will be
different from the way it is today.
You can have many reasons for wanting to check out this FAQ. Perhaps
you wanted to be an Internet provider from the day you were born, or
maybe you're just curious to find out what it may be like. In any
case, hello, and welcome to our world! This FAQ's for you, and I give
a warm welcome to any comments and additions you may have. Write me
at david@amazing.com
> Every day in every way, this industry is changing
This deserves some emphasis. Some people have defined a "Web Year"
as a month or less in "real time". And this FAQ was started in 1994,
when the web was barely visible on the horizon! So there's a lot here
that I'm including just for fun and sentimental value. I hope nobody
minds. It is, after all, my FAQ. :-)
So you'll hear a lot about shell accounts and BBSs. I'll tell you
right here and now that this information is largely obsolete; now,
everyone's using graphical SLIP/PPP accounts off Windows or Macintosh
systems. I've left the material in because I hate to eliminate
anything that might be of interest to someone, somewhere. But,
despite what I tell you elsewhere (in sections written many years
back), the BBS and shell account business is no longer a viable one.
Shed a tear for it. I did, since in many ways I liked it better;
there was more room for individual creativity and thought.
I went over the FAQ in considerable detail on June 2, 1997. There are
new sections everywhere - I've brushed up information on Suns,
improved the SGI section a great deal, added some more information on
NT. I've also finally revised my "totally cheap" perspective to
include information on the new access servers and 56k "standards" that
have taken the modem market by storm.
> Please do drop me a line ... but do me a small favour
An increasing number of Windows [tm] users have been writing me using
Unix-unfriendly mailers that do not break lines at 80 columns; each
paragraph shows up at my site as one long line.
My Unix mailer cannot digest these messages without a great deal of
additional trouble, so please make sure that you use a text editor
that can break lines at 80 columns or less (75 is a good number to use
as a general rule). The easiest way to do this is to send your
messages using a Unix Shell account with any of the standard text
editors available. I realize, however, that this advice may seem too
old-fashioned for the more enlightened and progressive among you.
If you don't have Shell access, or if you cannot bear the thought of
using Unix [tm], either:
- Press [enter] at the end of each 80-column line as you are typing in
your message
or
- Verify that your program DOES create [return]s at the end of lines.
Spry's AIR Mail program seems to be particulary bad in this regard; I
recommend that, if you must use Windows [tm] for some reason, you use
Eudora instead.
Microsoft Exchange under Windows95 is an absolutely horrid program
that automatically generates obnoxious "rich text format" versions of
each message you send, unless you explicitly turn it off. If you must
send me mail using Exchange, please make sure those are turned off.
Because their quoting conventions make text appear in a different
font, and not prefixed with special characters, it is very difficult
to follow a quoted message using Exchange. It's also best to switch
off MIME format for messages sent to me, since doing so make it easier
for me to read them.
In reality, of course, the best thing to do about Exchange is to discard
it and use Eudora or any other available mail client. Trust me on this
one.
I also have a great deal of difficulty reading mail with attachments,
whether MS-TNEF (ugh!) or HTML. So please do not use MIME attachments
if you can possibly avoid doing so; they'll make it harder for me to
read your message, and therefore less likely to reply.
> I'm thinking of making the FAQ strictly in HTML
For many moons, the FAQ was just available as a text document.
I'd really like to make the FAQ look better, by adding HTML formatting
and such to it, but I can't do that easily as long as it remains available
in text format.
Does anyone lack the ability to read HTML nowadays? Drop me a line
and let me know if this change would affect you negatively.
> Some personal experiences
I could make the FAQ even longer than it is now by just including my
personal experiences in it. But because I wanted to amuse as well as
inform, these are really in the style of stories more than FAQs.
Check them out, and let me know what you think!
David Buys a Router [ http://www.amazing.com/internet/router.html ]. In this
gripping episode, we see our intrepid hero David Dennis visit the repair
depots of the Information Superhighway in search of a router. Does he
ever find one? Stay tuned. [Updated 16 November 1995; someone asked
me for the brand and model of the router, so I added it]
David gets an Internet Connection [
http://www.amazing.com/internet/connection.html ] At long last, David
gets a 56k Internet connection. Read all about it! [Updated 28
August 1995]
> Highlights of the Current Edition
Section 6.11, Macintoshes running special MacOS software, has been
updated with more information on using Macs in your ISP. I've also
added a few notes on problems with Windows NT RAS. [Updated 10
November 1997]
Section 10.5, Accounting and Billing Practices, now contains a
comprehensive list of URLs to billing packages, as well as the
detailed commentary I've previously developed. There sure are a lot
of them, but unfortunately, virtually no information is included on
most. Note that I do not sponsor or endorse any of these packages; I
am providing the information because of a very high level of interest.
[Updated 12 September 1997]
Many, many sections were heavily revised and edited on 2 July 1997.
About time, eh? A new history of Net-99 has been added, for the
history buffs among us. I've added a nascent section on personnel.
For the first time, Access Servers are now discussed in depth.
Section 4.2, How do things pencil out? Some reasonably hard numbers,
has been updated to reflect current pricing for T1 connections - and
beyond. [28 September 1996].
Section 6.3, What about competition in local phone service?, has been
added with information about Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS).
Should you open your new business in a glossy downtown high-rise
building? It might be your most cost-effective solution! [28
September 1996].
A new FAQ has been born, on running a web presence provider.
Since it's brand new, you may want to study it and then return to this
one for some of the details. You can access it at http://cgi.amazing.com/web-faq/
Section 10.7, Making the Internet more User-Friendly
has been changed to include information on the pros and cons of
supplying Microsoft Internet Explorer instead of Netscape
[Updated 7 & 15 August 1996].
Section 5.4, Microsoft and AT&T, the Terrible Two, has had a name
change; I previously mentioned IBM as a major threat, but it seems
to have virtually vanished from the Internet map. I also bring you
up to date on the Microsoft Network challenge, which also appears
to be fading. [5 May 1996].
Section 9.2, Which News Software should I run?,
has been updated with information about DNEWS, an intriguing
alternative to INN. [5 May 1996].
Section 4.2, How do things pencil out? Some reasonably hard numbers,
has been updated with more information on International rates.
[5 May 1996].
Section 6.5, PCs running BSDI Unix, has once again been updated.
BSDI users have fought back and responded to some of the
bad-mouthing I'd added to previous versions of the FAQ.
The complaints appear to be isolated incidents and not a major
trend. [20 February 1996].
Section 15.0, Wanton Women and Straightlaced Crusaders,
has been updated with fresh information on the copyright issue.
[30 January 1996].
Section 18.0, Glossary,
has been given a much-needed facelift with a bunch of important updates.
[30 January 1996].
Another update to section 7.5, Who are the main national providers,
and how much?, with some good news for ISPs. Net Access is going
national. In addition, ANS, a corporate-oriented ISP known for
first-class service, has finally lowered its prices to realistic
levels. [Last updated 20 June 1997]
I've added Section 7.6, What happened to Net-99/AGIS?, with detailed
information on the rise and fall of this now-beleagured company.
This section includes information about the legendary Spam King,
Sanford Wallace. [Created 20 June 1997]
The Internet and Windows NT: A summary of opinions. Should you
consider this operating system as your next network server, or should
you stick with the tried and true SunOS or BSDI? A satisfied NT user
saw my earlier remarks, and replies. Oh-oh! There is now more information
from an NT user and opponent, who brings us up to speed on problems with
the Netscape Commerce Server under NT. More on this debate in
Section 6.11, What about Microsoft Windows NT?
[Updated 22 January 1996]
I've created section 10.10, How has Windows95 changed the SLIP/PPP Picture.
This will tell you much of what you need to know about Windows95 and its
PPP implementation. Much to my surprise, it's not bad. The rest of the product
has its problems, but PPP under Windows95 is a quantum leap past the horrors
of Trumpet Winsock and friends. [Updated 6 December 1995].
For a couple of different views on setting up virtual domains, check
out my Internet Resources page at a http://www.amazing.com/internet/ .
Section 6.7, PCs Running FreeBSD,
has been added to suggest another
interesting operating system for ISPs. It has an excellent pedigree;
how does it compare to Linux or other options? This section has been
newly updated with Free BSD ISP mailing list information [Updated 1
October 1995].
I've added a very brief description of Firewalls in section 8.4,
Firewalls. [Updated 18 July 1995].
I have significantly improved my section on Web browsers and servers,
starting with section 9.9, What about Running a World Wide Web Server?
This includes information on running a multi-homed web server (aka
http://www.bigco.com/ [Note: That's a generic example, not a real
link]) and comments on the Netscape extensions. [Updated 15 July
1995]
Should you bother starting a provider with a 56k line? Maybe there's
more hope than I would have thought, at least if the price is right.
Check out Section 4.4, New Information on the Viability of a 56k line.
[Updated 10 June 1995]
Section 6.16, Care and Feeding of Disk Drives,
has been started with a
summary of the discussion on inet-access of overheating disk drives
and what to do about them. Read this section so you don't need to
feed your Barracuda to the fish! [Updated 29 May 1995]
Ever been curious about Silicon Graphics, the super-upscale maker of
fine workstations for graphic artists and their friends? Our spies
snuck a peek at their Top Secret price list, and found that they're
not as expensive as you might think. Check out
Section 6.4, Silicon Graphics (SGI) Workstations.
Any discussion of what's new with the Internet has to begin with
Microsoft's announcement of the Microsoft Network, the new kid in the
online service block. With their announcement of $ 4.95 a month
access, they have thrown down the competitive gauntlet in a
spectacular way. Check out our news analysis in
Section 5.4, Microsoft and IBM, the Terrible Two.
To Netra or not to Netra: That is the question!
Section 6.17, All About the Sun Netra, tells you more than you ever wanted
to know about this vital issue. Don't be deceived!
Our FAQ maintainer decides to take the plunge and buy a Sun clone
system. Unfortunately, thanks to a stubborn connectivity provider who
just won't let loose an extra IP number, he hasn't managed to connect
it to the net. He loves his Sun, especially with the 21" NEC
"Professional Series" monitor he bought for it. But it has yet to be
thrown into battle. Stay tuned.
Our FAQ maintainer becomes horribly snobbish and spends more money
than he should.
Section 6.20, What sort of monitor should I get with my Sun?
tells you what he did and why.
> For Further Information, check out my WWW Site
For further information on issues ranging from setting up Web Sites to
using Linux as your Internet provider, check out my Web site,
http://www.amazing.com/ . The latest edition of the FAQ can
always be found here.
The FAQ is updated on a somewhat occasional basis, about once every
month or two. Visit the site and read in this page to find the last
time it was updated.
If you've been given a copy of the text version of this FAQ, you can
see the latest edition in HTML by pointing your WWW browser to
http://www.amazing.com/internet/faq.html . If you want to make a printout
of the FAQ, a text version is available at
http://www.amazing.com/internet/faq.txt . I would like to suggest that you
visit the main site at least once, because the FAQ is only one of many
interesting offerings we have.
> The Obligatory Commercial
David's Amazing Internet Creations is my new full-service Web
advertising agency. Those who are long-time readers of this FAQ
may remember that I ran a small ISP; since ISPs became more of
a commodity business, I've shelved those plans and switched to the
world of the Web in a big way. Since 1994, I had a small ISP that
ran unique BBS software that I wrote; thanks to the death of the
main machine running it, a Linux box, and the almost complete
lack of user interest, it has been shut down. It was the wrong idea
at the right time, alas.
For details, please visit my commercial URL at
http://www.amazing.com/new/ .
> Table of Contents
+ Major Contributers to the FAQ
I would like to thank the following people, whose efforts were
particulary informative, helpful or encouraging:
My thanks to Avi Freedman (freedman@netaxs.com) for sponsoring
the FAQ once again and providing some much-needed resources.
Karl Denninger (Karl@MCS.COM) has been kind enough to share full
information about his equipment configuration with the list, as well
as contributing intriguing observations on the politics of the net.
I can't afford to duplicate his equipment, {sob}, and I certainly
don't know how to dig into the swamps of Internet politics like he
does, but reading about both is both interesting and useful.
Draper Kauffman was kind enough to start an excellent
discussion of the pitfalls and problems of operating a small IP
provider. His discussion forms the core of my section on business
problems, which I'm sure will be of great interest to many of you.
Draper is the President of Illuminati Online, an Austin, TX provider.
Alicia Salomon was kind enough to contribute
information on many different topics, including organizational and
administrative issues I have yet to become familiar with. She also
gave me considerable moral support and encouragement when this
project was just a gleam in its creator's eye. Alicia is an
independant consultant working on Internet-related issues. In
concluding one of her notes, she reminds us, "Also, something really
important I forgot was you should include a pointer to alt.caffine."
Consider it done, Alicia. :-)
Bryant Durrell works as Postmaster for Netcom,
and has generously offered to write the section on security for us. I
particulary appreciate his input, considering the treatment I've given
Netcom in various sections of this FAQ. Later in the document, I give
him a manful apology.
My information on connecting to the Internet via leased lines came
mainly through the i.net info files (ftp to ftp.i.net:/pub/internetworks).
My thanks to Aaron Nabil of i.net for putting together the clearest
explanation I've seen of what equipment and services are needed to
start up a full Internet connection. Several books I've read have
not been as clear as his simple description of the requirements, as
shown in his info-prices file.
Most of the material in the BBS sections was kindly contributed by Mr
Eric S. Raymond . Mr. Raymond is the
programmer and designer of Chester County InterLink (CCIL), a free
public access site in Chester County, Pennsylvania, USA. He is also
the updater and maintainer of the legendary jargon file, now
published as 'The New Hackers' Dictionary, Second Edition', a book I
bought and read with considerable enthusiasm. (The book brings back
all sorts of nostalgic memories of the good old days I spent hacking
as a "Tourist" at MIT with the much-beloved and now lamented
Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS).)
This FAQ is copyright (C) 1994/1995/1996 by David H Dennis. Unlimited non-
commercial redistribution is allowed so long as the text and copyright
notice is retained in its entirety and not modified in any way. I
will soon be splitting this document into multiple parts. You may
distribute individual parts without distributing the whole, as long as
the FTP site for the document is mentioned or some other way of
getting the entire document is given. Commercial use is prohibited
without written permission from the author.
Release History and Changes
First Release: Sunday 14 August 1994 13:20:26
FAQ written. Circa 527 lines.
Second release: Sunday, 21 August 1994 12:52:10
Added distilled wisdom on low-capital IP startups; Added appendix on
use of BSDI Unix as a router; added statement on Net-99 courtesy of
Karl Denninger. FAQ balloons to over 2,000 lines for the first time.
Third release: Minor changes, unrecorded by history
Fourth Release: 17 November 1994
Added contributions on BSDI Unix by Tony Sanders and other
suggestions from him, particulary much information on how to use a
BSDI system as a router, and other generalized BSDI hardware
recommendations. Added information on credit card acceptance.
Rewrote the entire CIX section in view of recent changes to its
status. A little more on 'Guerilla Financing'. A section on
competition from the government, cable TV and telephone companies was
added. Many detail updates were also made that I don't remember.
Alas. :-( FAQ hits 4,119 lines, 197,862 bytes.
Fifth Release: January 26, 1995
The hot new trend of marketing through the Internet, a new way to use
your site to host stimulating and creative efforts, is now explored
in a new section, thanks to the fine folks in the inet-marketing
mailing list. Information about Sun and Sun clone hardware,
including sidebars on the new Sun Netra server and an Internet
"starter kit" is now included. Added contributions on Linux,
security and system administration from Bryant Durrell
, as well as an apology to Netcom lovers
everywhere. Added the first version of my script to kill off runaway
processes. Also added additional information for Macintosh and PC
BBS lovers. An inspirational paen to our friends at Microsoft and
Windows NT rounds up this month's exciting changes, and I chide
people for trying to run Internet providers without learning Unix.
FAQ once again jumps in size, this time to over 5,000 lines for the
first time.
Sixth Release: February 11, 1995
This release marked a major reorganization of the information
presented, and an effort was started to convert it to HTML without
completely messing up the text version.
This FAQ was prepared using various computers and software, including
a Tatung 85mhz SPARC 5 clone, a Sun 3/60, an IBM ThinkPad 750C, Sager
and AST laptop computers and 486 DX2/66 computers running both Linux
and OS/2. Both GNU Emacs (Unix) and Epsilon (OS2-DOS) text editors
were used. The author most heartily endorses writing on the Sun/Sparc
(when at home) and the ThinkPad (anywhere else); both are splendid
machines for writing, perhaps the best available.
Note added 24 June 1995
Gee, I haven't updated this section in a while, have I? I've more or
less continuously revised the FAQ since I put it on the Web, but most
of the changes have been quick additions which don't lend themselves
well to a summary of highlights.
In late January 1996, my 56k pipe started to fill, and the system is
now running on a T3-connected site courtesy of Avi Freedman of Netaxs.
Many thanks to him for his support!
+ Introduction
+.# What is an Internet Service Provider (ISP)?
An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company that connects members
of the general public to the Internet. It can be distinguished
from an Information Service such as CompuServe or America Online by
its emphasis on Internet tools such as USENET News, Gopher, WWW, etc.
Traditional bulletin board systems (BBSs) normally don't have direct
access to the Internet and can offer only limited USENET news and
mail, with no other Internet services. I consider any online system
a provider that has a direct Internet connection and provides access
to it in one or more of the following ways:
* SLIP, CSLIP or PPP. These protocols let you connect your users
directly to the Internet, using standard Internet protocols. Most
importantly, this lets you use Netscape Navigator and other graphically
oriented web browsers. Almost everyone currently using or running an
Internet provider now uses this approach; the other two access methods
are largely obsolete.
* Unix Shell Account - Users are given the infamous "%" prompt or
some variation thereof. Sometimes a simple menu is also provided,
often cobbled up through various Unix utility programs. However,
the basis of the system is Unix, and normally the user cannot take
full advantage of the services offered without knowing at least a
few Unix commands.
Most people nowadays find Unix accounts to be horribly confusing.
They are also significant security risks; hackers can do a lot with
that % prompt that they could not do from their own machines. Shell
accounts can also download information at the full speed of your
connection (as opposed to your modem's). Finally, shell accounts take
quite a bit more in the way of system resources because you have to offer
them disk space and CPU time on your own computers. Because of this,
most providers are rapidly moving away from shell accounts. Almost no
providers even offer them anymore.
* Provide customers with a custom BBS with specialized Internet
features (newsreaders, etc).
Many people have tried to put together some form of Internet access
under commercial or shareware DOS or Windows BBS software. Most that
I've seen have not been notably successful at this task. In
particular, the lack of high-quality newsreaders for USENET makes the
systems incredibly confusing to use. The advent of off-line mail
readers may help this at least somewhat; the majority of postings
through BBSs come from them. Unfortunately, most off-line readers
tend to mangle headers badly and are a major source of annoyance (and
occasional amusement) among USENET readers. The popular QWK format
is a particulary bad victim of this practice; it uppercases all
subject lines and limits them to 20 characters, both considered
extraordinary poor form by USENET readers. The Whaffle DOS and
Unix-based BBS has created a different off-line reading format which
I believe may work better for USENET applications; unfortunately, I
have not yet seen it in operation. Most Whaffle operators, however,
find that users consider their systems confusing and difficult to
navigate.
Note that off-line reader programs, even those that work well with
USENET, cannot help when it comes to using WWW or Gopher, which require
real-time access to sites.
TBBS, a DOS-based BBS program, has a system called the IPAD, which is
apparently a 486/66 running some specialized software and including an
internal router interface. It's quite expensive, but should give TBBS
sysops a leg up when it comes to managing Internet connections. As
far as I can tell, however, this doesn't help much when it comes to
the messaging system, which is still ghastly. It's also not
frightfully cost effective, as far as I can tell.
Curiously enough, eSOFT has now discontinued TBBS and has based its
entire future on the IPAD. I did some work under TBBS and found it an
amazingly solid product; I'm sorry to see it go.
Major BBS presently has an Internet module with severe limitations;
for example, mail and news processing must still be done via UUCP (!).
Based on the track records of the respective packages, I would assume
that TBBS' package will be the better one. However, I think the best
packages will probably be developed for Internet users by Internet
system instead of existing commercial BBSs.
Incidentally, we have the usual dispute over what names to give ourselves.
Sean Shapira and others would like to call us Internet
Access Providers (IAPs): "Personally, I call them Internet Access
Providers. They are only one class of Internet Service Provider. Others
focus on providing services to the already-connected Internet community.
GNN and EIT are examples of this." Since the name of the mailing
list is inet-access, he may have a point here. Why don't I change
the name of the FAQ, then? Because I'd just finished changing all
my ISVs (Internet Service Vendors) here to ISPs! :-)
Anyone else feel strongly on this issue? If I get enough response
on this issue, I'm willing to crank up M-X replace string again. :-)
+.# Why might I want to become an ISP?
Growth, money and the glamour of it all. The sleepless nights, the
18-hour days, the opportunity to exercise your mind and get creative
in the provision of imaginative services for your users.
The challenges removed in the move towards SLIP/PPP as a universal
connection mode are largely restored by the creativity necessary to
sell and create custom WWW sites, where considerably more money per
sale is available.
Despite all the publicity that's come up over the Internet, there
are many rural areas that still don't have any form of connectivity.
Many people now starting ISPs are doing so for idealistic reasons:
either to provide good access in areas where most providers offer
poor quality service, or to provide the only access in an area not
yet served with a connection.
+.# Why might I not want to become an ISP?
Probably the most important reason is that competition is sharpening.
Well-funded people such as Microsoft have discovered this business,
and they've been highly aggressive and successful in the past. The
small entreupeneurial company still has a chance to joust with the big
boys due to the relatively level playing field, but the odds of
success seem to be narrowing.
The capital needed can be daunting to we start-up folks. True, it's
nothing compared to setting up a CompuServe or America Online, but
for the individual, it's a lot of money. For the group seeking
venture capital, it's a lot of pain and paperwork.
And then, once your dream starts being real, there are always the
sleepless nights and the infamous battles with Sendmail and
InterNetNews. The sinking feeling you might get when you're staring
at a $ 2,200 router as part of a $ 3,000 a month connection, and
realize that you don't quite understand the beast.
The growth of SLIP/PPP accounts, which are very much a commodity
business, much like the phone or cable TV, may change the creativity
element beyond recognition for many providers. Still, the so far
incredible growth rates should help make up for this.
In an earlier version of this document, I mentioned the possible
filtering of routes by the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX) as a
possible threat to your long-term viability as a provider. It's way
past November 15th 1994 now (I'm writing this on February 6, 1995),
and so far it appears that nobody's been much affected by the new
changes.
Finally, if your only reason to start a provider is to make money,
you probably shouldn't do it. You'll be beaten out by those of us
who love the net and who are willing to work utterly ridiculous
hours to make your system a success. If you don't love staring at
the screen for many hours, or if you value an offline social
life, the net's not for you.
+.# A Special Sidebar: Do I REALLY need to know Unix?
I have received mail from a dismaying number of people who admit that
they don't know Unix, and they don't want to learn Unix. They
typically suggest that they use Windows NT or even Microsoft Windows
to start a provider.
To begin with, if you don't want to learn more about computers than
you ever thought existed, you don't want to become an Internet
provider. You'll find yourself staying up late at night reading
thick computer manuals, instead of going out to that wild new night
club you heard about. You may be reading this because you think
being a provider is a sure-fire business idea; in reality, there are
no sure-fire business ideas. You may think you can make a billion
dollars with little work; lamentably, this is not the case, in this
business or anywhere else.
Still want to start a provider without learning Unix? Note, then,
that the entire provider business, and the whole network of support
you will be joining (including the Inet-Access mailing list) has
standardized on Unix. Even trying to use another operating system
for all but the most specialized purposes is well acknowledged in the
ISP business as a colourful eccentricity and most likely a big waste
of time and money.
You might think that not using Unix would be like using Ami Pro
instead of Microsoft Word, or using OS/2 instead of DOS and Windows.
This is not a frightfully good analogy, since both OS/2 and Ami Pro
are fine, fully functional programs. Windows NT does not have all
the functions needed to work as an Internet provider; Microsoft
Windows will crash the first time you tried to expire news. Unix is
proven, easy to get help on, and has a far more comprehensive network
of programs and utilities available.
If you're not a real expert, you don't want to use a non-Unix
operating system. If you don't know at least something about Unix,
you'll have a hard time being successful as a provider. My
recommendation is to become familiar with Unix through use of a shell
account from a provider. You may find it easier than you think, in
which case you're likely to enjoy running a Unix system. Or you'll think
it's harder; in that case, you probably shouldn't be in this business
at all.
More details of the pitfalls of trying to run a non-Unix Internet
site are given further on, but that should give you enough to think
twice.
+ What about business organization and raising money?
+.# What sorts of business organizations should I use?
For the budding ISP, the sole proprietorship is certainly the
simplest and most tempting organizational scheme. No tiresome
forms to fill out, no lawyers needed, and no thought wasted
on the issue.
Many people, however, note the virtues of a Subchapter S
corporation. This neat little format has the limited liability
protection of a corporation, combined with the more favourable
tax treatment of a sole proprietorship - you can still deduct
losses directly off your returns.
Unfortunately, the liability shield, while it looks great on
paper, may not be quite so wonderful in practice. In the
case of corporations owned by individuals, the courts typically
"pierce the corporate veil", considering the individual and
the corporation identical in case of liability. So if your
solo venture goes bust, you may still wind up in trouble
despite all your fancy papers. Thus, to make Subchapter S
sensible, it's vital that you have at least one partner.
It's worth noting that any corporation, including Subchapter
S, requires a large commitment to maintaining curious rituals,
such as annual meetings and elections of directors. If you forget
even one small detail in these curious events, you may wind up
losing your corporate status. Beware!
Michael Krause summarizes the case for the
S Corporation:
* Tax benefits: "Give yourself no salary, take out loans from
business, etc. Works out perfect, a nice little loophole
in our tax system."
[ Warren Henke [henke_w@cc.dixie.edu] comments as follows: "The IRS
has become more strict on this point, and doing what you suggested has
a very high chance of triggering an audit. The individual should be
paid a fair salary, subject to SE tax. The remaining profits,
however, can be creatively distributed. If you want rulings, regs, or
other info, contact my firm: Savage & Esplin, LC, 801/673-6195; ask
for Warren"].
* Personal Asset Protection: You can take out a business loan
and leave personal assets protected - unless they are needed
to guarentee the loan. Unfortunately, most banks are too
smart for this little trick, unless your corporation has
substantial assets and an existance distinct from your own.
* decreased liability. Note that corporations cannot
commit crimes; if your corporation is accused of criminal
behaviour, you as owner are responsible.
Like virtually all legal advice given on the net, this information
comes from non-lawyers. You should consult your own legal experts
before making any final decisions.
+.# How much does it cost to set up an ISP?
This is one of the most commonly asked questions. Unfortunately, it
varies so enormously we can't give you any hard figures.
If you're talking about a company using professional equipment, such
as Suns and SGIs, access servers, and so on, figure on at least
$100,000 worth of equipment and about $ 75,000 for the first year of
technical charges (setup fees, T1 access, etc). In addition, figure
on the cost of office space and people. You'll need at least one
full-time technical guru if you're not one yourself.
If you want to use Linux systems and access servers, figure on a
minimum setup of about $ 35,000 for the equipment and - again - about
the same $ 50-75k for the technical charges for a T1 and a healthy
dial-up modem pool.
None of this is cheap, and generally cheaper equipment won't save you
nearly as much as you might anticipate. Unfortunate, but true.
+.# What resources can I use to get capital for my ISP?
Obviously, the easiest way to find money is to use your own. No
tiresome investors to deal with, no people breathing down your
neck when profits don't come quite as fast as one might like, and
no delays waiting for people to make up their minds.
So, winning the lottery should be the ideal way to finance your
new business. Unfortunately, most of us will admit that this is
rather a long shot.
One solution to this problem is to have a full-time job already and
live quite frugally. Then the balance of your income can be used to
finance your system. I've managed to do quite a bit with this
method, but unless you're used to a frugal lifestyle or have a
princely income, it's really no fun at all. Worse, there are
definite limits to growth; I can afford to fund my 28.8kbps SLIP
forever; I couldn't afford even a month's worth of T1 charges without
outside help. Unfortunately, as we will find out a bit later in full
detail, this kind of plan may not be enough to start a profitable
provider.
Parents, friends, relatives and people who have seen you in action are
probably the best early investors. They know and trust you through
previous dealings with them. Creating a preliminary business plan and
walking through it with them will not only help persuade them; it may
also yield good advice about what is needed to sell it to them or
others. (My most likely source of financing is my day job boss).
A recent book called 'Guerilla Financing' tells how you can locate
"angels", individuals keen on investing small amounts of capital
($10-100k) in start-up ventures. Their motivation often comes as much
from the glamour of being associated with some prestigeous enterprise
as a desire to generate profits; this is, for example, the spirit in
which Broadway shows are traditionally financed. The book has some
fascinating detail on the precise procedures, and I will have to buy
it next time I see it to give some ideas and better pointers. In sum,
however, an Internet provider business might be a particulary good
field to find an "angel", since they are often interested in the
glamour of investing in high-tech ventures.
There are other, more formal, sources of investment.
Venture Capitalists. They take a sizable percentage of your business
for the money, but they might be your best chance. This is especially
true considering the "trendiness" of this subject. (Someone who has
actually dealt with a venture capitalist might be able to help me out
a bit with this section. :-) )
Note that venture capitalists are almost always interested in
eventually taking your company public and reaping the sizable returns
that can be obtained therefrom. If you don't want to eventually wind
up with the hassles of running a public company, you may not want to
go this route. Keep in mind, though, that it could make you a
wealthy person if everything goes right. Netcom went public a few
months ago, and Bob Reiger, its founder, is sitting on a mammoth
paper profit right now. (Note that this is true even though Netcom
has been a perenial money loser).
Banks. Not really an option until you're a going concern.
The US Small Business Administration (SBA). According to Joseph
Lamar Greer , it is nearly impossible
to get a SBA loan unless you can qualify as a minority. Many people
have gotten loans by taking on a qualified minority partner or
partners.
Tom Berdan is an Executive VP of a small bank
in Tampa, FL. He has been a SBA lender for the past years, and wants
to correct some common misconceptions about the SBA. He writes us as
follows:
"Your section on 'What Resources Can I Get For My ISP" quote a Joseph
Lamar Greer as saying it is nearly impossible to get a SBA loan unless
you're a minority. This is the single largest misconception of the
SBA loan programs. In fact, the largest program is the SBA 7a
program, which provides loans to SBA businesses. No minority
qualification is required, and if the business owners are miniorities,
it does NOT factor into the decision process. SBA loans last year
totalled over $ 7 BILLION, with projections to approach $ 9 BILLION
this year.
"The basic requirements for a SBA loan are that the owners must have
some capital, management expeirence, demonstrate that there is
sufficient cash flow to repay the loan, and collateral. SBA loans
probably are difficult to find for $ 10,000 to purchase the equipment
for asmall 28.8 ISP provider, but oculd definitely be available to an
ISP after a successful track record as a small ISP looking to expand.
It really depends on the lender - which is where one starts the
process. The SBA has recently started a low doc loan program. This
program is designed for businesses needing less than $ 100,000 in
loans, and the amount of paperwork submitted to the SBA is greatly
reduced. However, the same 'basic requirements' above still apply,
and NO minority participation is required. My advice to anyone
interested is to call their local SBA office and ask them to provide a
list of lenders in the area. The process starts there, with the
lenders, and not with the SBA. Also, the SBA is available on the
Internet. If you're interested, drop me a note and I can provide you
with the HTTP page address."
[It sounds to me like this is a great deal like a regular bank loan,
in that your financial viability needs to be assured before you can
successfully pursue this option. As Tom says, the SBA gives loans,
not grants or direct investments; as a result, there needs to be a
very clear and straightforward path to repayment. I don't think this
is something most beginning ISPs have; however, it would certainly be
useful for expansion, as he says].
Lottery Funds and other Economic Development Grants: In some states,
grants are available from the state (often funded through lottery
proceeds) for business development. Note that this is in the form
of grants; you don't need to pay this money back.
Department of Commerce: The US Government is investing $ 1.2 billion a
year to promote "development and deployment" of the "National
Information Infrastructure (NII)". Whether this means anything that
can help us is open to question, but you can check out their FAQ
on this subject through their BBS (202) 482-1199, or their WWW page:
http://ntiaunix1.ntia.doc.gov:70/0/faq/niiques.asc
You would presumably have to be a non-profit or school to get these
grants.
+ What sorts of returns can I expect making as an ISP?
+.# Introduction: The world is changing.
For quite a while, you could start an ISP on $ 10k worth of equipment
and a smile. Karl Denninger's MCS-NET (mcs.com) did that and became a
sizable presence in Chicago very quickly. Avi Freedman's Net Access
started on a 14.4kbps line, an ancient SPARC and a couple of modems.
Congratulate them. It's not so easy anymore, especially in areas with
present competition. You probably have your best shot if existing
ISPs have dreadful reputations. In fact, I decided to start my
provider after noticing Netcom's bad service; Netcom is the main
provider I know of for Southern California. (When I started my provider
service in Van Nuys, California, in the San Fernando Valley, I was
the Valley's first "native son" provider).
When I started this FAQ in 1994, Netcom was pretty much the only game
in town, and despite lots of customer gripes, it was growing at tremendous
rates. At the time, Byrant Durrell of Netcom, who has since left them,
said that I was being unfair in regard to Netcom's quality of service in
the previous paragraph. (Now, he has long since left Netcom).
In November of 1996, while I'm writing this update, Netcom now has as
poor a reputation as ever. More national providers have joined Netcom
in chasing the elusive goal of national service. Unfortunately for
them, most of them have the same reputation Netcom does. Apparently,
it's expensive to get customers on a national basis, and it's also
costly and inefficient to run national networks.
What this means is that, in markets not yet saturated by local providers,
the provider opportunity is still there and most likely worth pursuing.
My thanks to Draper Kauffman for providing the
initial inspiration for this section.
+.# How do things pencil out? Some reasonably hard numbers
At long last, I've done a healthy amount of updating to this
section.
One of the most controversial aspects of Internet provider lore is
how much load you can put on your system and its Internet connection
before things become intolerable to your customers.
To run a high-quality, conservative service, the consensus seems
to be the following:
28.8K SLIP: You can run three phone lines and get reasonable, but
not great, service for all of them. This is what I was doing in 1994,
and it did work well, although the lag in telnet connections
(caused by high latancy on the phone lines) is bothersome to many.
CSLIP (compressed SLIP) seems to produce a dramatic improvement over SLIP.
56k: You can run up to eight phone lines and get satisfactory service.
However, see our new section "What about a 56k line?" for some details
and some evidence from 56k defenders.
For a long time, I had a line, and I must inject a word of caution
about these figures. I presently have six phone lines and a very
lightly used BBS/ISP (time has really passed it by, due to its
text-only interface). For about six months, I had my voluminous web
pages on it. It took me under three months for my web pages to
completely saturate my 56k connection. So if you're planning to offer
any kind of web page service at all, you need a T1 line or better. As
a result, for a long time I had my web pages on another machine,
thanks to the generosity of Avi Freedman of Net Access. He has a T3
line, so bandwidth is no longer an issue. But you can see that
offering web pages on a 56k line is pure folly if you expect them to
enjoy any level of popularity.
ISDN: Some people have considered starting an ISP using an ISDN
connection. Depending on your location, this could be a decent idea
or an extremely stupid one. It turns out that most telephone
companies that offer ISDN are charging by the minute for the service.
At $ 0.01 per minute, that's $ 432 a month, or about the same as the
cost of a full T1 frame relay connection. So if that is the case in
your area, you definitely should not go this route.
There is a possible way around this called (in Pacbell-land, anyway)
Centrex ISDN. It's available only if you're in the same phone prefix
as your upstream provider. That is, if your number begins with
818-997, and your upstream provider's number begins with 818-997, you
could be lin luck. If you qualify and can get it set up (which is
apparently one of those painfully ardurous processes), it should work
for you. I have been told that dealing with the phone company on this
is even worse than dealing with them on a regular ISDN circuit, which
is horrorific enough.
If you have flat-rate ISDN, or if you can take advantage of Centrex
ISDN, it's a good, cost-effective way to get started. But remember
that ISDN equipment won't go above 128k, so when you grow, you'll have
to buy all new equipment. An ISDN router, which you'll need as an
ISP, is about $ 1,000.
T1: Now we're motoring! A T1 line can support up to 27 times more
lines than a 56k - thus, around 200 phone lines. But that doesn't
tell the whole story; a recent discussion between users on Inet
Access with more than a T1 reveals that a T1 should be able to
support the actual throughput of around 300 users.
Here are some rough rate calculations, together with the provider
that supplied them. This pricing information was updated on
28 September 1996.
------------- --------- ------------ --------- ---------- -------------
Provider Service Monthly Cost Line Cost Total Cost Cost/T1
Cinenet 28.8 SLIP US$ 125.00 20.00 145.00 Absurd
Various 56k US$ 350.00 100.00 450.00
Net Access T1 US$ 600.00 500.00(1) 1,100.00 1,100.00
ISI T1 US$ 918.75 500.00(1) 1,418.75 1,418.75
ISI 10mbps US$ 2,726.25 (2) 2,726.25 419.88
UUNET T1 US$ 3,000.00(3) 500.00 3,500.00 3,500.00
UUNET 10mbps US$ 6,000.00 2,750.00(4) 8,750.00 1,347.61
UUNET SMDS 34mb US$15,000.00 Unknown Unknown Quite Low
UUNET T3 US$49,000.00(5) Lots Massive Unknown
------------- --------- ------------ --------- ---------- -------------
(1) Actual prices for T1 connections using your local phone company
will vary dramatically. Pacific Bell and GTE prices for Southern
California vary from about $ 400/month to $ 1,000/month to pipe a
T1 to your desired location.
Net Access is a east coast-based provider based in Philadelphia, PA.
It is the connectivity sponsor for this FAQ. From all the comments
I've heard on the Inet-Access mailing list, it is one of the few
wholesale access companies with an absolutely spotless reputation. Do
business with them if you can; you'll be glad you did.
http://www.netaxs.com .
(2) Requires the rental of space in the same building for a direct
Ethernet connection. It's also possible to use MFS On-Net service
to connect to other MFS-connected buildings at the $ 2,750 rate below.
You can also pay the monthly charge at a flat-rate $ 30,000 a year,
with a further 5% discount if you pay within 15 days of invoice.
(3) Substantial discounts from these published rates are rumoured.
The list price of installation is $ 8,000, but substantially lower
rates (circa $ 1,000) have been reported. The actual price is
dependant on usage; I've shown you the highest tier, so with some
luck, actual pricing will start low and build with revenues. See
http://www.uu.net/pricing.htm for full details. Additional Discounts
can also be had with a term commitment (one, two and three-years).
(4) Requires tenancy in a MFS On-Net building, usually large office buildings
in major metropolitan areas.
I previously included Net-99 in my price lists. Because Net-99
effectively no longer exists, it has been removed. AGIS, Net-99's
successor company, has been mainly notable for horrifyingly poor
service. Rest in Peace, Net-99.
Cinenet is the provider I used for 28.8 SLIP at the time I wrote the
first version of this FAQ. I currently have a 56k connection with
via.net [ http://www.via.net ].
ISI is the provider I use for T1+ services. They are a university
consortium based in Los Angeles. You can find them at
http://www.isi.edu .
UUNET provides what is probably the best service of the major
providers. MCI is also looking good for service quality, but watch
out for their rates and billing. They are offering a tiered rate
system which is said to be quite expensive compared to their previous
costs.
Connection Phone Rate/L Cost/ Cost/ Gross
Connection Cost/Line Lines Commercial Line User Income/L Total
---------- --------- ----- ------------ ----- ----- ------- --------
28.8 SLIP 48.00 003 30 (bus) 78.00 7.80 100.00 300.00
56k 56.00 008 30 (bus) 86.00 8.60 100.00 800.00
T1 12.00 200 30 (bus) 42.00 4.20 150.00 30000.00
------------- --------- ------------ --------- ---------- ---------
For a long time, European and Asian rates were as much as
ten times higher than US rates. According to Antti Summa
[anti.summa@netropolis.be], this is no longer the case, with
rates for major urban areas about the same as in the above
table, and in rural areas around 2-2.5 times more than that.
(If this is true, it would make European rural rates lower
than American ones!).
I'd be interested in hearing other non-US provider's experience
with rates, so I can update this information better.
Here are some sample European rates, kindly contributed by Hans
Michalec :
FYI the recent rates for the data lines in Austria (via EBONE). Rates
are in ECU (approx. =1$)/year. So, a 64 kbps line does approx. 33.000 $ a
year - LUCKY AMERICA!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
speed/kbps: 9.6 19.2 64 128 192 256 512 1024 1536 2048 3072 4096
commercial
cost/kEcu: 14 20 33 60 91 118 206 292 376 442 694 832 *)
academic
cost/kEcu: 8 11 15 27 41 53 92 122 153 174 275 320
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*) commercial members whith their own US line get a reduction of
3 kEcu per 64 kbps access.
(end of quote)
When I first wrote this document, SLIP/PPP accounts were an exotic rarity
and most people used the net on a Unix shell account. Nowadays, most people
are using SLIP/PPP accounts, so comments about the older shell/BBS are mainly
obsolete.
Because of the proliferation of providers, SLIP/PPP accounts have gone
down dramatically in price, to about $ 16.95 unlimited access.
However, the industry has moved into two tiers: Mediocre service for $
16.95 or so, and first-class service for around $ 25-30. As a general
rule, beginning ISPs should plan on offering first-class service and
charging rates on the higher side. If there is a real proliferation
of providers in your area, Internet access may no longer represent a
first-class business opportunity unless you have some special "hook"
with which to attract customers.
At this point, I would strongly discourage you from trying the access
provider business unless you can afford a T1 at minimum - unless
you're planning on supplying access in a rural area with a minimal
customer base. If you are doing that, however, be prepared for
extremely low potential profits depending on your community's status.
The cost per user assumes 10 users per line, the standard. Gross income
per line assumes rates of $ 10/month for 56k or below, going up to
15/month for T1 service. Running the numbers shows extremely low gross
profit for 56k or 28.8 SLIP connections using the standard measures.
Of course the T1 user can also be a SLIP account, which commands
about a $ 17/month or more fee. So you can see how much better a T1
is than a 56k; you can not only sell more accounts; you can sell more
expensive ones. To make matters worse for the 56k connection, the
standard of 10 users per phone line is effective for about 16 phone
lines and up. For fewer lines, you may be talking about 7-8 users
per phone line, because the concentrations of users tend to clump
more for a small number of people.
Louis Epstein [lepslog@j51.com] reminds us that in some areas, a
fractional T1 can be a good investment. Where he is, for example, he
can get a 384k connection for $ 1,600, while a full T1 would cost him
$ 2,200 a month. I had talked to people about fractional T1 service
before, and my impression had always been that it was not that good a
deal compared to a full T1. This example doesn't exactly refute this;
for only 50% more a month, you get four times the bandwidth. But if
you're in a tight budget, and don't have use right now, it sounds like
an option well worth checking out. In the case of his provider, they
will upgrade to the higher speeds for just the price difference
between the fractional and full T1. So when you're ready, it's easy
to switch. This is a big black mark against the 56k, whose service
needs to be completely changed and re-installed when you convert over
to T1.
28.8K SLIP deserves mention as a viable option for the start-up provider,
just to get its personnel familiar with the various pitfalls of running
a system connected to the Internet. I've learned a great deal with my
28.8, and recommend it very highly to anyone considering a start in this
business. As you can see by the table above, it's no moneymaker, but
it's not a dramatic money loser, either. Anyone with a more or less
decent daytime job could maintain a 28.8 SLIP provider for as long as
their interest continued.
The main problem with a 28.8 SLIP is its main advantage: You do not
use a router or a CSU/DSU. It's good, because you don't need to cough
up the cash for them. But you're not going to get to know one,
either, and that can be a problem when you upgrade to a better
connection. Another disadvantage is that you can't distribute the
load between machines; SLIP connections are pretty well confined to a
single unit. (In 1994, when I ran such a connection, I had this
problem; expiration of news was taking a long time on my system, so I
would have benefitted greatly from having a news server. Alas, I can't hook
one up because I'm just connecting a single machine and not a
network).
The 56k option looks like an extraordinarily unhappy compromise. If
we subtract basic expenses of $ 86/line from the gross income of $
100/line, we get only $ 14/line in gross profit, or $ 112/month for an
8-line system. Obviously, nobody's going anywhere on a 56k connection
unless they either charge a lot more than the going rate as I know it,
or bend the rules to the breaking point. However, it certainly is a
way to get to know your router and CSU/DSU without spending massive
amounts on them.
Finally, if you are lucky enough to be able to afford a T1 connection
to the Internet, and have a successful marketing plan, the T1 option
is very clearly an excellent viable business. If you could fill up
all 200 lines a T1 is capable of serving at a rate of $ 15/month,
you'd have 2,000 users and $ 30,000/month to dispose of. You'd probably
need to hire a few employees at that level - it couldn't be done
properly with just one person - but you'd be able to afford them.
At this level, you could also resell 56k network connections to
companies that needed their own net presence. Joe McDonald
says that this is a surprisingly easy thing to
do, and should be considered in any projections involving T1 lines.
Tony Sanders suggests fractional T1 as a good
way to 'ease in' to the real thing. "You pay full T1
line charges but the total cost is quite a bit less and it makes for
a very easy upgrade path." This seems to depend a great deal on both
the provider and the telephone company you have to deal with. When
I was talking to ISI Network Associates and Pacific Bell, I found that
ISI charged the same for Frac-T1 and T1, and Pacific Bell only charged
about 20% less for the smallest increment of frac-T1 (256k).
T1 people can also sell SLIP connections reliably, which are generally
significantly more expensive (in the $ 20/month and up category). SLIP
is generally a high-bandwidth eating operation, so normally you won't
want to sell this form of connection on a 56k or lower line. However,
note well: Joe McDonald has successfully sold
and operated SLIP connections on a 64k Frac-T1; he says both he (when
he calls in from home) and his customers are happy with the service.
Craig Warner ; http://www.pcisys.net/~craigw sells
an Internet Starter Kit for a bit over $ 20,000 (see the section on
Sun hardware, below). He says that this should support 1000 users
before upgrades; projected break-even point is around 700 users. "One
thing to keep in mind is that business accounts can generate a great
deal more over individual accounts - we paid about $ 200 a month -
with only a dial-up UUCP connection until recently. We now have a 56k
Frame Relay connection which costs about $ 400 per month in total
fees." The aforementioned Joe McDonald charges $ 200/month for
permanent 28.8k SLIP; he already has one such customer after only two
months of operation.
+.# Co-Location with another ISP
If you are doing primarily web page provision, without user accounts,
by far the cheapest way to get started in an ISP business is co-location
of your server at another ISP's site. Ideally, this company should be
a large, T3-connected site, although it's possible to get "too good to be
true" deals if you do business with someone who only has a T1.
Avi Freedman of Net Access, for example, charges $ 800 per month
per machine, for T1 bandwidth or below off his T3 link. This is far
cheaper than any other T1 solution, and can give you extremely high
speed access, possibly better than if you got a T1 from a smaller
company.
Co-location with a small ISP can cost as little as $ 200-300/month, but
you may find that the bandwidth they have is not adequate for your
purposes, especially if they're co-locating a large number of machines
off a single T1 line.
If you're a small, rural ISP with only enough capital for a 56k or
128k line, a particularly intriguing idea would be to run your own
direct access site off the 56k, but co-locate with a large, urban
company for your web sites. That gives you the ability to sell
high-speed web access, without the need to pay for expensive phone
connections to your actual site.
+.# What if I oversell my connection?
Probably the most tempting option for the 28.8K or 56k provider who'd
like to get some decent profits out of his system is to oversell the
connection - that is, to exceed the recommendations listed in the
previous section.
The argument is seductive: Many people are cheap. They'd rather have
an inexpensive connection than one that worked perfectly. I (the
start-up provider) am just one person, and I can't provide a perfect
system in any case; I just don't have the capital for a T1 or a
24-hour staff. Could I play the ISP game anyway, by just selling an
overstressed connection for less money than other providers?
The main problem with this game is that it's too easy to play. If
you offer cheap service at cheap prices, there are bound to be people
with more resources than you who can offer cheaper service at even
cheaper rates. This is Karl Denninger of MCS.COM's comment: There
will always be someone who can undercut you. Quality service,
though, is very hard to come by in the Internet provider business.
Many very large providers, such as Netcom, are highly vunerable to
complaints about terrible service. If you can capture some of their
customers by offering excellent service - even for more money - you
probably have a very good shot at gaining market share, even over
very large companies. So you may want to at least consider the high
road, not the low.
Craig Warner adds: "As a case study, our
provider failed to upgrade his hardware to keep up with growth - they
lost over 500 accounts in a month."
Michael Krause is an excellent example of a provider
who's managed to succeed despite the handicap of a slow link to the
Internet. His system runs 8 phone lines on a 28.8K link. What makes
this possible is that only a few services - most notably FTP and
downloading images through WWW (which shell or BBS account people
can't do anyway) require a major proportion of the data pipe.
Mudders, Telnet and IRC users are low users of the system capacity.
Usually he sees a maximum of two simutaneous FTP sessions, which can
be handled by the system. He points out that, as long as his
customers don't have experience with faster providers, the speed is
not a tremendous issue with them. He suggests that the peak
number of users on a 56k would probably be between 75 and 100. A
couple of other people have mentioned 40 as a "reasonable" maximum
number of simutaneous connections on a 56k with light FTP traffic.
Note that heavy use of FTP and WWW may change this dramatically in
time.
The aforementioned Craig Warner suggests: "Intelligent local
caching is another way to survive with lower bandwidth. A
3-5GB cache on a server could cut bandwidth requirements
significantly."
From personal experience, I know that users will stick around after
just about any disaster, as long as access is free, and it's
understood beforehand that the system is experimental. I knew that
my system would be unreliable due to the new software I was writing,
and my inexperience as a system administrator. As a result, I
started by running it at no charge, with the understanding that lost
mail, connection problems and such would be accepted as typical
experimental system pains. So far, the overwhelming majority of my
users are very loyal, but that may change when I start charging even
a nominal amount of money. In short, giving service with problems at
a low price may be a reasonable strategy, but unfortunately there's a
big difference between "low" and "free" in most people's minds.
A couple of my users have told me that they don't want to pay for the
system as long as telnet connections are so slow, so even my strategy
may not pay off. This may, however, be due in part to problems with
runaway processes I've had on my system, which have decreased
performance for all users. Since then, however, I've solved my
runaway problems and gotten a CSLIP connection, which is much faster,
and I seem to have silenced the doubters.
News and mail reading and writing, of course, use virtually no
bandwidth at all, and you could run a news/mail only system on a very
slow SLIP connection. However, the value of this to the general
public is questionable. Still, if this is the primary interest of
your users, they'll probably be pleased with virtually any bandwidth
level. Note, however, that even a 28.8k SLIP doesn't seem to be
enough for a full newsfeed through INN, at least through my present
provider. (Things have improved dramatically since I started using
CSLIP with them, but how much I'm not sure at this time).
Many people get Internet access through their work or school, but
those institutions normally censor the content provided. For example,
it's pretty tough to find alt.sex.bondage on a corporate machine,
unless you're its manager. This opens up a surprisingly large market
of people who have access already, but want to telnet in to check
out the "forbidden" topics and sites out of their school or employer's
wary eye. This is likely to grow with the recent decision at a major
university (I think it was CMU) to halt access to sexual newsgroups.
This might make a system with an excellent news connection and nothing
else a viable site. It's also an excellent way of competing with the
Freenets, which are cheap but heavily censored. Many providers,
including MCS (Karl Denninger's provider), offer cheap
telnet in accounts for that reason. Because the users are just using
a small portion of your network connection and no phone lines, you can
charge them a lot less for access and still make money.
Unfortunately, the "forbidden" topics, including the alt.binaries.*
newsgroups, have increased dramatically in size, making a strategy
created around them probematical unless you have either a T1 line,
Pagesat service or both.
I have noticed that, as long as FTP works, the slow speed doesn't
bother me much. What does bother me is delays in character echo when
I type. This seems to indicate that, if your system hardware is fast
enough, you may be able to deliver service that's perceptively better
than Netcom's even with quite a sluggish link.
My conclusion to all this is that many ISPs can get away with bending
the rules for a while, at least until the competition gets a T1.
Then, all that careful business planning and development may go to
naught. As Tony Sanders summarizes the situation,
"It's kind of like a race for the T1 connection :-)"
+.# New Information on the Viability of a 56k line
Several people have written recently that I have significantly
understated the potential of a 56k line. Apparently many people are
running between 10 and 20 simutaneous users off a 56k with
considerable success and happy customers.
The reason for the discrepency has to do with the usual use people put
to the line. In a traditional Internet provider, a large percentage
of users were engaging in FTP sessions; the minimum allowable
bandwidth was based on a large percentage of users continuously FTPing
stuff. Now, most people who were formerly FTPing are using the Web.
Fortunately for providers, this means that most of the time they are
just looking at documents, instead of sucking them up and departing.
As a result, people stay on your system longer, but use less of your
bit pipe.
Christopher X Candreva writes:
"I'm currently running off a 56kb: Full news feed, 20 dial-in lines.
It's just getting tight. Large FTPs are slow, but PPP people are
still limited by their 28.8 modems. The only people who complain are
shell FTPers.
"And I'm upgrading to T1 by the end of the month."
Jacob Westfall has a similar experience.
"I run a small ISP with SLIP/PPP users. We have 20 incoming lines and
get 150M of news a day. Typical transfers for the 14.4 users is
1-2k/s. Most of them use WWW and speeds on those lines are pretty
good. Most pages load in a couple of seconds, the longest page to
load I have seen was 1 min. The only complaints about speed I have
ever had were first time Internet users who have just finished using a
BBS and complain that they aren't getting the same transfer rates.
Some of my users were signed on with larger Internet providers who
have full T1s and they say the speed with my company is the same as
with their previous provider. The main issue is not overcrowding the
line. 20 lines on this 56k is as far as we are going. Interesting
note: Our provider has a T1 and says he is only using about 256k of
it. What most people have to realize and this is sysadmins included
is that IP is not constant traffic. Watch the lights on a modem
transferring IP sometime and you get the drift. 80-90% of the time
the lights are idle while customers are using the web. What you have
to look for in a Frame Relay 56k which is what we have, is that the
provider you get it from has a large enough link into the cloud. Our
provider had 128k into the cloud and just doubled that to 256k. Our
speeds have almost doubled in terms of NNTP transfers from them and
overall user speeds have jumped about 20 percent."
Note, however, that many of those people are in places such
as Canada where T1 lines are prohibitively expensive, and 56k service
costs almost as much as T1 here.
Still, even in the US it would appear that you can get a 56k line to
work as a provider, as long as your service offers a stripped down
newsfeed. A full newsfeed of around 450 megabytes a day is definitely
not going to fit well within a 56k. Before December 4th, a company
called PageSat offered a USENET feed via satellite; the company's
reputation was always a little flaky, but customers coped with it due
to the sheer brilliance of the concept. Unfortunately Pagesat now
appears to have gone out of business. I have more detailed information
on how this service worked and its demise later on in this document.
Note that if your newsfeed is slow, you may have the equivalent of a
partial newsfeed without realizing it. INN will not use all of the
data pipe for transferring news, at least not in my experience. As a
result, my system, running off a 28.8k SLIP, probably isn't getting
anywhere near a full feed, even of the groups (alt, rec and misc) I'm
getting. This may make your 56k or lower connection appear to work
better than it actually does.
Despite this apparent good news, everyone I've seen is going to a T1
or trying to do so. Once you hit that 20 simutaneous user barrier,
you're almost certainly going to need one, and need it yesterday.
If you can afford a T1, get one by all means. But if you're on a
shoestring, and have some way you can compete with other providers in
your area, a 56k just might do the job. If nothing else, it'll tell
you if there's demand for your service before you take the plunge and
start spending the big money.
+.# Draper Kauffman's 56k Connection Sudden Death Scenerio
This message is both so scary and so dramatic that I can't resist keeping
it in the FAQ, even though I've summarized many of the financial arguments
above. The message is that if you have a 56k connection, you have at
most a $ 500 gross profit, even with a $ 20/month rate. And $ 20/month
is unsustainable in today's market. Here's what that $ 500 would cost you,
if you could even get it at all:
From Draper Kauffman :
How hard do you have to work to get that? To begin with, if you are
growing fast you've recruited a lot of new users recently. They'll have a
million questions and requests. You're also doing all the accounting,
putting out accurate monthly invoices for 100 erratic users, depositing
70-80 checks, and deciding what to do with the no pays and late pays.
Meanwhile, you're trying keep your system up and your 8 bargain modems
working, and deciding what to do when mail runs 2 days late, or your
newsfeed stops coming, or whichever of the normal Net-crises hits you that
day.
All told, you probably put in 50-70 hours per week, maybe a lot more. You
make less than a ditchdigger, and you aren't getting paid for the use of
your equipment, so you haven't got any source of cash for upgrading or
expanding your system.
But you're still adding customers! And here comes the crunch that
threatens almost every low-capital ISP these days: too many users asking
too many questions, not enough bandwidth, people bitching about how the
system slows to a crawl every time you get your newsfeed, programs crashing
because the user disk is full, and so on.
Too many problems are allowed to fester and turn into flames, and suddenly
you just can't cope. There aren't enough hours in the day or dollars in
the bank.
Angry customers quit and bad-mouth the system and new people stop coming.
If you keep your rates at a moderate level you won't have enough volume to
cover your costs. If you drop your rates to bargain levels, you keep more
customers, but you're losing money on every one, so that's no help. You're
bleeding cash, and pretty soon some unforeseen expense will put you out of
business. You probably won't even know it until your check to the telco
bounces, since you haven't had time to do the bookkeeping for months.
That's the nightmare. Even if you can raise more capital at that point and
try again, you have to fight the bad rep of having run a shoddy operation.
And bad word of mouth hurts you more on the Net than in almost any other
business.
What causes this scenario? Here are ten good reasons:
1. Having insufficient capital.
2. Underestimating the time and routine expenses involved in a startup.
3. Overestimating the owner's knowledge, abilities, and stamina--the
heroic programmer complex.
4. Grossly underestimating the manhours needed to get the system up and
keep it running smoothly under load.
5. Starting with inferior services: slow connection, inadequate disk
space, skimpy software (gopher, lynx, etc.), slow or partial
newsfeed, and/or running too many functions (news/mail/users/etc.)
on one CPU and drive.
6. Charging too low a price (as a result of points 2 through 5).
7. Using cheap hardware and no backups.
8. Starting with a system with insufficient capacity to produce enough
profit to finance continued growth.
9. Allowing growth to exceed the sustainable system capacity.
10. Sloppy and inadequate accounting--it's easy to get behind, and
usually fatal.
(I would add inadequate marketing to the list, except that that can easily
be a blessing. One highly successful marketing effort could add 2-300
users in a week, completely overloading the system.)
Here's Draper's summary of the present environment:
Although there is market to market variation, today's ISP startup faces a
significantly more difficult challenge than those that started in the last
few years. Quality expectations are up and user fees are down. The result
is that low budget/low volume/low quality/low cost systems can no longer
expect to find a profitable initial niche in most markets. Without new
capital or a steady stream of profits, they have no way to increase quality
or capacity
Increasingly, a new service in a competitive area needs to offer a full
range of services, good user support, and a fast, reliable, and accessible
system in order to charge a premium price. Success will require larger
amounts of capital or inventive ways to overcome the numerous barriers to
low-volume profitability.
+.# So, what can we do about this?
These are my personal suggestions as FAQ maintainer on what to do if you're
a low-budget IP startup and somewhat intimidated by all this:
(1) Create some innovative services. For example, you might want to
host community-related sites, such as the police department and local
charities. You could also spend a few hours a week net surfing and
reading net oriented publications like Wired. Then, you can announce
the "newsgroup of the week", "URL of the week" and "Telnet Site of the
Week". It would also not be a bad idea to put out a monthly
newsletter that contained that information and told people to be sure
to come online for that and similar events.
I think if you make your system a valuable resource to show people what
they can do on the net, you'll build loyalty that will pay off when
the crunch comes. And you don't have to do that just through direct
personal communications; inexpensive media such as a simple informational
menu and newsletters will do fine.
(2) Try to find a backup source of capital. From what we've seen in
previous sections, it's highly doubtful that 56k is a viable solution,
especially if you need to share your returns with investors. As a
result, it's pretty much T1 or nothing. Costs for this seem to vary
dramatically depending on your market, as I've covered previously.
(3) Don't quit your day job. A 28.8k system will work fine for you
to test your ideas until you can get financing to get closer to the
big time.
+ The Big-Time Competition: Should you worry?
+.# Invasion of the Federal Government
The Feds helped make the Internet the incredible success it is
today, so it seems sensible at first blush to suggest that this
should continue. As you probably know, the government is in fact
abandoning the Information Superhighway, heading for the exits just
as the place is starting to look pretty darn impressive. Many people
have in fact wondered out loud why the government doesn't just buy
a bigger backbone and stay in the business.
The Internet was a highly successful government program mainly
because they didn't do much. Yes, they provided the funding, but the
key to the Internet's success was that they didn't put very tight
control over what it was used for. Thus the curious fact that a
sizable percentage of network traffic is alt.binaries.pictures.
erotica.female instead something sensible like scientific reports.
The Internet has been operated not by the government, but by local
sites.
Unfortunately, this non-governmental control combined by Federal
funding just cannot last. Now that the "Information Superhighway" is
becoming a more prominent part of people's lives, it's only a matter
of time before Fundementalist Christian groups try and get
alt.sex.stories booted off the net. And if our woozily incompetent
government is still in control, there's a pretty darn good chance of
that happening.
Best of all, the lack of government control over the net gives us the
ability to start our systems, run them as well as we can, and even
have a little fun doing it. Don't ask for the government to return,
or we might get the Post Office of Internet providers - slow,
expensive and stupid.
+.# Invasion of the Phone and Cable People
Cable TV companies represent a more interesting competitive threat.
For just $ 75 or so a month, they tell us, you can have a circa 56k
connection to the Internet, providing you with far higher quality
fthen you'd ever get through a traditional ISP. PSI recently
conducted a joint experiment with a cable company in Cambridge, MA.
Obviously this is a very biased location because more computer and
Internet lovers live there than virtually any other place; you would
expect firm demand here even if the whole thing was a disaster
everywhere else. (True, many people would have access through their
places of employment. Still, there are more people who would find
the sheer technological "win" of interest than anywhere else I can
think of). I have read that the venture was a disaster, with hardly
any signups. My suspicion is that few people wanted to pay those
prices, when they could get a $ 20/month account from an ISP.
However, it's also possible that people are using their free
university and work-based Internet accounts instead of going with
PSI. Many Internet users, however, normally use separate accounts
for work and home, so my guess is that the PSI service was just too
expensive for the benefits offered.
| Update: PSI's Cambridge venture into Internet over cable TV has
| apparently been cancelled, per Karl Denninger .
I received a correction on this long-standing part of the FAQ from Jeffrey
Shapard, who apparently worked on the project:
--
I was a bit amused by the commentary on our
PSICable project up in Cambridge, Mass, where we did early work on
delivery of Internet service over a CATV plant. You refer to it as
a disaster. Actually, it never went to market. We actually
considered it a success, in that we managed to get early technology
working well despite the wild hairy beast of a live 2-way cable
plant. But we also figured that the difference between what it
would cost to provide the service well versus what folks would
actually be willing to pay, given all those less sexy but tried
and true alternatives, just did not make a good business case. So,
with tears in our techies' eyes (mine, too!), we put it on the
shelf for another day and moved on.
--
Before ending our discussion of cable TV companies, it's worth noting
the results of another venture, "video on demand". This was supposed
to be the holy grail of cable TV, the service that would pay all the
fantastic costs associated with the "information superhighway". A
distinctly low-tech test was created, where a rack of VCRs was hooked
up and a person hired to grab the requested tapes and load them.
Prices ranged from $ 0.99 to $ 4.00 per view. For a typical video on
demand venture to be solidly profitable, executives predicted that
roughly four rentals per month would have to be made per customer.
The actual figure was slightly under two, attained with the kind of
promotion blitz that couldn't possibly be duplicated on a wide scale.
Apparently people actually enjoy making the trip to the video store
to check out their evening's entertainment. (This was reported in a
recent issue of Wired (I think September 1994) and in the LA Weekly).
My conclusion from these two points of information is that the telephone
and cable-driven superstructure is likely to be a flop. Internet
services would require far more complex connections than video on
demand or home shopping, and I doubt that the profit potential is
as high. As a result, I doubt that we have much to fear from the
"cabledroids".
Phone companies, such as Pacific Bell, have gotten into the Internet
business, but despite reasonable rates, they don't seem to have much
effected the ISP scene, although cross-selling with second phone lines
might be a trend to watch for.
There is, however, one thing to watch out for: Many telephone
companies are arguing to drop the traditional local calling areas and
replace it with metered service. If they did that, and offered an
unmetered Internet connection, they could own the market. Be sure to
do your darndest to make sure this doesn't happen in your state!
ISDN might be another version of this, which should in theory be able
to offer switched 56k connections to the masses. So far, the phone
companies have been very sluggish to promote this service, but with
the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth this is bound to change in
time. Unfortunately, such an event is bound to hurt the typical ISP
big-time, since the T1 lines we buy (forget about a 56k when your
customers use ISDN!) will carry about 1/3 the users they did
previously. Whether the public is willing to pay the increased costs
associated with such a service is open to question, considering the
failure of early cable TV efforts discussed above.
ISDN has the potential to be a sneaky way for the phone companies to
get back into the measured service system they know and love. It
looks like they have lost the battle for measured service for voice
phone connections, but ISDN is a brand new game. Right now, Pacific
Bell makes residential ISDN available on a measured basis during the
day, and a non-measured one on evenings and weekends. We'll see if
people take the bait. Pacific Bell, however, has recently doubled its
ISDN per-minute charges, which makes me think the phone company is
really rather clueless in its marketing; I'd have a hard time
recommending ISDN to anyone not using the connection for heavy business
use in view of these much higher charges.
Karl Denninger offers ISDN on his provider. When I asked
him how well it was working, and how good customer acceptance was, he
said, "It's dogs---; interoperabilty problems galore."
In short: Keep your eyes open, but at this point I don't think the
competition is likely to be as bad as it looks.
+.# What about public libraries and Freenets?
Well, this is a strange one. Here in California, we hear about
libraries shutting down for lack of support every day, and yet people
are talking about hooking them up to the Internet! I guess Pac Bell
will be donating the service or something, since otherwise that would
look like a pipe dream.
There are two schools of thought among ISPs when it comes to library
connections to the Internet:
(1) They are evil, government-subsidized organizations who might
become ISP competitors "through the back door", giving free or very
inexpensive services.
(2) Why not join them, not beat them? Most libraries really don't
have the resources to run themselves, much less operate an ISP. Give
them space on your ISP, and let people have limited free access from
library-based terminals. Then, if they want more, or if they want
modem-based access, they will naturally come to you first.
However much I may dislike government-based organizations on the
main, I still think (2) is by far the best thing for an ISP with a
potential library competitor to do.
Freenets generally offer very limited Internet access. A large
number of my system's customers have come from the Los Angeles
Free-Net; they don't care for its censorship policies (which I
gather exclude the sexual stuff) nor for its very limited range of
systems you can telnet to. As a result, I think you could consider
your local Freenet a nice way to introduce people to the Internet
who you can then talk into becoming your customers.
Frank Hecker was kind enough to write with
some additional comments on this issue. Frank is on the board of
directors of CapAccess, a Washington, DC community network; he
was also its "administrator and chief technical honcho" for its
first couple of years. ("Community Network" is the public domain
term for "Free-Net"; the latter is a trademark of the National Public
Telecomputing Network. CapAccess is not part of NPTN and therefore
not a "free-net", even though the same general concepts are used).
Not surprisingly, Frank believes that your local library or freenet
can be an ally, not an enemy. "I believe strongly that community
networks and commercial providers have many potential areas of
cooperation, and are far better off in the long run cooperating than
competing." ISPs tend to have the technical ability to set up a
complex networking system; community networks and libraries have
sources of information and close ties to the community.
"My position has always been that community networks should encourage
users to move on to commercial providers as soon as possible,
especially if the users' main interest is in Internet access as
opposed to community information (which is the raison d'etre for
many community networks)."
Frank suggests that the future of community networks is less in
providing net access and more in providing information to the net.
Competition has brought the Internet to the people at an increasingly
low cost, and community networks don't have the time or fiscal
strength to keep up with net administration tasks. It might make more
sense, then, to set up local newsgroups on the community's commercial
Internet provider, and use it to run Gopher and WWW servers. Even if
the community wants to run their own server, confining it to local
content and the provision of information through the WWW might make
better use out of scarce community resources. (Just a full USENET
newsfeed takes about 130MB a day, so a few days' of global news would
tax the type of equipment a community provider could normally afford).
The only problem with this vision is that people who don't own
computers, or those who are too poor to afford an ISP's charges are
effectively frozen out. Libraries are particulary interested in this
problem, as the traditional providers of information for people with
intellectual curiosity but no money. Because of this, Frank says: "I
found your suggestion about ISPs cooperating with libraries to provide
limited free access a particularly useful one in that regard."
"The bottom line is that I would strongly recommend that any small
local ISP get to know the local people involved in community network
and "Free-Net" activities, and see if there are any possibilities
for joint ventures. Going into this, you should recognize that their
attitudes and motivations may be significantly different than yours
(especially if you're a net.libertarian) and that in many cases they
will have emotional and institutional reasons for wanting to run their
own systems. (Generally the larger the institution the stronger these
reasons will be, which is why ISPs in small communities may have more
success with this approach.) But in all cases I think ISPs will be
better off going into discussions with a "win-win" attitude as opposed
to demonizing community network people as proponents of public
give-aways and enemies of the free market."
In late 1996, in a move that was symbolic of the problems of the
Freenet movement, the umbrella Freenet organization went into
bankruptcy. The text-based model of the Freenets with its clunky
software was just not what users wanted.
+.# Microsoft and AT&T, the Terrible Two
The hottest news in November 1996 was America Online (AOL)'s
conversion to $ 19.95 a month flat rate. Considering their poor
profitability at their previous higher price points, it's unclear as
to how they'll be able to afford the results of this announcement,
even if subscriber churn goes down significantly.
Most ISPs who have talked to AOL users say that Internet service
quality is a far more important issue to them than price. If this is
so, the worsening user to line ratios on AOL is likely to cause severe
difficulties in the near future. Because of this, most ISPs are not
worried, despite the audacious nature of AOL's move. (Now, in July
1997, we know this is exactly what happened; AOL got a massive black
eye due to connection problems the ISP community predicted as soon as
the changes were announced).
AT&T has put forth a major threat to existing ISPs, with their offer
of $ 19.95 per month for unlimited access. Early reports have support
as being quite poor, but nobody underrates the threat of a major national
name getting into the business with highly aggressive pricing.
Note that this rate matches some Internet providers, but doesn't beat
them. I think that, if you're offering high-quality service, people will
continue to use you and recommend you.
Many providers feel that the influx of customers generated by massive
advertising campaigns will be good for their companies. These national
organizations appear incapable of providing high-quality service; all
those who have tried so far have failed, including AT&T and MCI.
Our good friend Bill Gates, of course, wishes to take over the entire
world of computing, so consumers will soon be using Microsoft Windows
to use a Microsoft online service to hear more about Microsoft
products. Those who to hear about IBM, Lotus or Novell will probably
want to use the Internet, so of course Microsoft will provide that,
too. (I wonder if the new service will use Windows NT SMTP, which is
still known in the industry as a bug-ridden product).
The Microsoft Network's evolution over the year or so of its existance
has been rather intriguing. They never got much of a content base, and
as a result they decided to move into primarily offering Internet access.
Since their rates are higher than regular Internet providers, I don't think
they'll have much impact on our core customers, except for people who
need a nationwide dial-up network.
One fascinating fact, reported in the Wall Street Journal, is that
Microsoft has now basically deserted their content providers in their
rush to the Internet. As a result, the system described in the paragraph
below may not even exist anymore, but I thought the concept was
interesting enough to retain.
Microsoft's new Microsoft network (aka Marvel) is meant to bring the
online service world into a new age. In a hype-filled press release
available via Microsoft's web server, they made it look like death
time for all Internet providers and online services, however well run.
A base fee of only $ 4.95 a month, combined with a de-emphasis on
hourly rates, is supposed to make the Microsoft Network more
affordable and higher quality than its rivals. In an interesting
innovation, the cost of running the network was meant to be borne by
the content providers, not Microsoft or the users. For example, let's
say Time magazine wanted to get on the Microsoft Network. They would
have to pay Microsoft's internal fee for use of the service, and they
could raise the money by (1) charging their subscribers, or (2)
charging advertisers. So if MS's internal fee is $ 1/hour, Time could
charge subscribers $ 1/hour billed via MS, or they could sell $ 1
worth of targeted advertising during that hour, or they could charge $
0.50/hour to the consumer and sell $ 0.50 of targeted advertising.
And, of course, they could charge higher rates than this (say $
2/hour) and make money.
How Time would raise the money was completely up to them, and they
could bill any amount they pleased for any service. So if Lexis came
on to MS Net and wanted to bill $ 50/hour, they could.
What this means to the Internet is most mysterious, since there is no
real "content provider" who could be charged. My best guess is that
UUNET becomes the content provider (since they are the people running
the MS Network connection). If they have to charge $ 1-2/hour for the
service, as they almost certainly do, I don't think we have much to
fear from them.
I don't think the type of consumer who likes the Internet will be too
fond of Microsoft's offerings, which I feel are likely to be pretty
well sanitized. So in sum, I doubt that the MS Network is likely to
be the disaster for Internet providers it's been considered. If anyone
has additional information on this topic, though, I'd enjoy hearing it
and would update the FAQ accordingly.
Recently, Microsoft's entire strategy for their MS Network has been
changed to basically fold it into the Internet instead of fighting it.
This seems to be a substantial retreat from their earlier efforts; what
they will do with MSN itself is hard to say. Stay tuned.
The good news on the Microsoft side is that their PPP support is
genuinely well regarded, far superior to anything offered with
Windows 3.1. With the growth of Windows95, it looks like offering
Internet accounts will be far less painful in the future.
+.# America Online (AOL)
For the longest time, AOL seemed to be pretty laughable as a
competitor. Not only was their service terrible, it was also way
overpriced compared to an ISP's.
Their service is still bad and likely to get worse, but in a recent
bold move that I suspect will cost them dearly, they have matched ISP
pricing - for $ 19.95/month, you can get all the AOL you can stand.
If, that is, you can get online. I predict steadily lower revenues
and more busy signals for the online service, which should send plenty
of new customers our way. AOL also made some key mistakes, such as
putting all customers on the higher cost plan. They expected this to
help offset the loss in revenues from their high-end users, but it
backfired in very bad PR for them.
Some providers have noted that AOL's moves have had a negative impact
on customer acquisition. I'd like to hear from more people when this
issue stabilizes, since it's quite possible that things will shift
dramatically in the near future due to service problems with AOL.
They were bad before; with the unlimited policy, they can only get
worse.
+ Equipment
+.# What are your bottom-line recommendations for ISP hardware?
This depends on exactly where you are on the learning curve and what
you want to do with your equipment.
If you're not too familiar with Unix, or if you just want the coolest
equipment on the block, I recommend Silicon Graphics (SGI). I use
SGI equipment, and I continue to recommend it because it's the most
enjoyable Unix to use. The main disadvantage is a lack of commercial
software and high compiler prices (GCC is hard to get running). A
good starter system is a SGI O2 with 192MB RAM and an external
(third-party) 9GB disk. That will work great as a mail and web
server. However, I don't recommend the WebForce bundle because you
can buy a Macintosh + software for about the same as the SGI software
alone, and it won't burden your main machine. Support is excellent
and reasonably priced (Sun's support is a lot more expensive, and I
don't hear too much good about it). Greg Douglas at
http://www.reputable.com is an excellent dealer of used systems that I
recommend without reservation.
To run a solid, professional operation, I recommend Sun UltraSPARC
equipment. Sun has a reputation for being solid, and the public domain
software most of us wind up using compiles easily. HP/UX is also
worth a look due to the extremely high quality of HP equipment;
however, it's known as a mutant version of Unix; that makes it hard to
get software running. I recommend getting Sun clones instead of Suns;
Ceram at http://www.ceram.com sold me the Sun clone I have running
www.amazing.com even to this day. It's been my web server for years
and years and has never given me a lick of trouble.
If you're very familiar with PC hardware, or if you have a small-scale
system and don't have the budget to do things the more professional
way, I recommend Linux. It's cheap and available on pretty much all
PC hardware.
If you're not familiar with PC hardware and want to go the cheap
route, I think the Apple Macintosh is worth a look. It has a small
but devoted group of fans, and it's more secure than anything else out
there.
+.# What kind of computer(s) do I need to become an ISP?
I don't know a frightful lot about hardware, but this section of the
FAQ has stood the test of time and comments pretty well. The main
exception is a great deal more information from BSDI fans about their
favourite system. In addition, as I have been actively shopping for
Sun hardware, I've talked extensively with both a Sun reseller and a
reseller of Sun clones. The occasional Linuxer has made his presence
known as well. If you have some comments on this information, please
speak up; I'd like to be able to flesh this section out a bit more.
To start with, you need some computer capable of running Unix.
Opinions vary dramatically over what operating environment is best,
but few who have been in this business long use anything but a Unix
derivative operating system. Here are a few capsule arguments for
various versions of Unix; corrections are welcome. Remember, the most
ferocious holy wars are often between those of strikingly similar
beliefs! Christianity versus Judiaism, Sun versus BSDI versus Linux.
Watch the flames grow!
+.# A Summary of this Section with Supporting Documents
Recently, another Sun versus PC debate broke out on the Inet-Access
mailing list, which was unusually enlightening. Here's an executive
summary; in the HTML version of this document, I have attached
pointers to two messages, one from a Sun lover and the other from a PC
enthusiast. I hope this will help interested people make a decision.
On the Sun side:
Advantages:
- The most stable solution, easiest to set up
- Good hardware decisions are made for you already; you don't need a
hardware expert to figure out what to buy.
- Most of the public domain Unix software is easier to compile on a
Sun than any other platform.
Disadvantages:
- The proprietary components are harder to locate; you can't just drop
by your neighborhood PC store and buy a replacement if something goes
wrong. Note, however, that many components, such as memory and SCSI
disk drives, are standard.
On the PC side:
Advantages:
- You can get a slightly better machine per unit of price. (The
difference is probably less than you think).
- You can exchange parts with your existing PCs, if you have any; if
your ISP business fails or you decide you don't like it, you can wipe
Unix off the system and use it for DOS/Windows.
Disadvantages:
- You need to know something about hardware to get a system that will
work.
- Setup can be very painful (it was for me).
+.# Sun Workstations and SunOS/Solaris
If you have a ton of money to blow, go right over to your local Sun
distributer and pick up a couple of nice little Sun Ultras. They're
just a shade pricey, but net wisdom has it that you'll have the least
trouble if you go this route. Sun owners are generally quite happy
with their technology, but some admit that the PC Unix route is so
much cheaper that the entire world is going in that direction.
| Or is it? Sun clones, surprisingly enough, are not too different
| in price from Pentium PCs, once items included in the former are
| added to the latter. For example, every Sun clone system comes
| with Ethernet and SCSI at no additional charge. See the section
| on Sun hardware, below, before writing off Sun as too expensive
| for your application.
A short word on a very emotional topic: Many people have run Suns for
years, and on the main Sun has rewarded their loyalty with
high-quality and much loved machines. However, a few years ago, a
dreadful event happened: Their beloved Berkeley based SunOS was
effectively replaced with Solaris, a somewhat slow and bloated System
V OS. Because of this, just about everything that ran on a Sun had to
be extensively rewritten. Many people stuck with SunOS because they
didn't want to rewrite their software, they didn't want to buy new
versions of their software, and they enjoyed the superior performance
of the old system. In addition, early adapters to Solaris were
confronted with a baffling series of bugs, problems and midstream
changes that eroded their loyalty to Sun. Over the several years
Solaris has been out, the bugs have been fixed, performance has been
cleaned up, and all in all it's said to be a nice OS. If, of course,
you can forget Sun's betrayal of a bunch of formerly happy customers.
It is this and not any (or at least not many) intrinsic failures of
the system that causes Solaris to be mentioned so negatively in any
discussion of Suns. If you want a new Sun, and in particular if you
want to take advantage of the new multi-processor architectures, you
need Solaris; SunOS effectively does not support more than one
processor. None of this should prevent people from buying Sun
hardware, which is apparently still quite nice stuff. It remains the
standard for running an Internet system. (Much of this was
contributed by Scott Hinnrichs ).
A good compromise was recently suggested by the aforementioned Craig
Warner of . Instead of getting an expensive SS20 with multiple
processors, pick up a couple of SS5s with a single 85MHZ processor
instead. That system roughly equals the performance of a single
processor SS20, at only a shade over half the cost. By buying such a
system, you can stick with the tried and true SunOS.
This compromise is no longer recommended, for a simple reason. As Sun
hardware is updated through their Ultra series of chips, you may have
no choice but to run Solaris in order to take advantage of their
higher performance. SunOS is now almost completely phased out, much
to the disgust of other users.
+.# Silicon Graphics (SGI) Workstations
SGI is the Mercedes-Benz SL600 of workstations. Classy. Expensive.
Slick. Those that use 'em, love 'em. Those that can't afford 'em,
hate the fact that they can't afford 'em. Based on posts I've seen in
the misc.forsale.computers.workstation newsgroup, they seem to have
the highest resale value of any computer I've seen.
In October of 1996, the SGI O2 and Origin 200/2000 series systems were
introduced. Early reports are that these are outstanding systems
which will serve ISPs well. In fact, these are the systems I am using
for my own ISP project.
People who actually use them as web servers think they're great.
People who use them to develop web site graphics love 'em. It might
not be a frightfully good idea to use a SGI box as your shell machine,
however; the default SGI configuration apparently disregards security
almost completely. That may not matter too much if you're just
putting up a non-secure Web server; it seems to me that SGI might be a
first-class web server + web site design machine, with Suns or PCs
doing the grunt work of servicing shell accounts and news. After all,
do you really want users playing around with your Mercedes-Benz?
A quick net surf showed that SGI has one of the best net presences
I've seen. Friendly SGI employees answered most of the questions on
the SGI newsgroups I checked; the SGI FAQs are some of the best I've
seen on any subject; the WWW site is slick and inviting. Many of the
users who asked questions on the SGI newsgroups showed a fierce
affection for their systems; this was in sharp contrast to the Sun
groups.
SGI used to be pretty tight-lipped about its pricing, but now pricing
for the low to mid-range (O2 to Octane) systems is available on their
web site. You'll have to register, but it's a fairly painless process.
Pricing for complete systems is actually fairly reasonable; pricing
for components isn't.
I have a WebForce O2, but I think you can get most of what you really
need from an O2 from a non-Webforce version. The version of Photoshop
they include is old and has mind-bendingly massive memory
requirements. They do have some cool tools to create things like
buttons, and I'm glad I have it, but for the $ 1,000-odd cost, I think
I would have been better off getting a Macintosh with the latest
version of the graphics programs.
SGI has many plus points for the look and feel of the environment and
the sleekness of the GUI, especially for users who would otherwise
consider NT systems for their ease of use. SGI is easier to use, and
it's also deeper if you want to probe inside and really understand
things.
Absolutely incredible, mind-blowing graphics software, such as
Alias|Wavefront, is available, but it's not something you want to give
your graphics tyro - their entry level package appears to cost about
$ 7,000.
Unfortunately, other software, such as mid-range commercial databases,
is hard to find. However, the excellent shareware mySQL package [ http://www.tcx.se ]
has filled this gap very well, with performance comparable to or better than
costly solutions such as Oracle.
I've found support to be very helpful so far, but I haven't had much
need for it. Service/support contract prices are reasonable compared
to, say, Sun's.
The opposing view comes from Mark Tempest
, who says:
"If you plan on having your SGI workstation on the Net, be prepared
for someone to spend lots of time on making such a host secure. Very
secure if you plan on using it as a secure server. SGI, in recent
threads on comp.security.unix, has taken quite a bashing over their
stance on security issues surrounding their workstations. One SGI
employee, while I don't think he spoke for the company (in fact I'm
pretty sure he disclaimed it) was heard to say that the machines come
configured for internal use in a lax security environment such as a
corporate LAN, and not as a plug-and-play node on the Internet."
The SGI Administration FAQ has a commendably comprehensive list of
known SGI security holes and how to fix them; I was quite impressed by
its thoroughness. In fact, the whole SGI series of FAQs impressed me
a great deal in terms of near-obsessive completeness.
So you may not want to run credit card numbers or digicash through a
SGI system. If you want to do that, you should get a separate Apple
Macintosh server that does nothing else; unless you're an obsessive
security professional, no Unix or NT system is secure enough for that.
Because the Mac wasn't really designed for remote access, it's very
hard to crack.
I think the O2 has cleaned up a lot of SGI's act on security - there
are some very nice utilities now to automatically disable most
features that can introduce vunerabilities. As with any vendor, it's
best to replace many of the vendor-supplied software (especially
sendmail) with newer versions or alternatives.
Steve Davies has another type of cautionary
tale. "Our experiences with SGI equipment have not been so
trouble free. We have several SGI machines, Indy's, 340's, etc. We
used them to replace some older HP boxes (HP 3000s), mainly for
client/server database applications. We have had several CPU and disk
failures over the last couple of months, whereas the HP platforms
rarely skipped a beat (one disk failure in many years, even that event
was well anticipated)."
Note that SGI is System V, not BSD. This means that it may be
somewhat more difficult to get some networking programs to run, just
as this is also true of Sun's Solaris (see the detailed discussion of
this in the Sun chapter).
If you want to buy a workstation because you have money to burn, and
would just love to do all sorts of neat things with it, I suspect the
$ 6,000+ SGI O2 is the ideal machine for you. For why I think this,
check out their web site, http://www.sgi.com/ .
Finally, If you're a snob, you gotta love SGI. Their marketing people
have brains, a real rarity in this business. Your Web site can have a
neat "SGI Powered" logo that you can use to tell people your Web
server runs on computers that are more expensive than God.
My systems have now been running since April without a single hardware
failure or serious problem.
+.# PCs running BSDI Unix
A small group of people on the Inet-Access mailing list have recently
given BSDI poor marks in support. Other BSDI users, however, have
responded with loyalty, saying support is still fine. Karl Denninger,
a traditionally strong supporter of BSDI, turned against them when
they refused to give him priority service when he promised to buy a
support contract. Note, of course, that this means he did not have
one at the time! There are still many BSDI loyalists, although some
have still questioned the now much higher cost of source code.
Before that, here's what Karl and others had said about BSDI. It
should be interesting to see what happens in the future.
BSDI users are ferociously loyal to their system. Karl Denninger,
probably the most successful provider on the Inet-Access mailing list,
uses modified BSDI systems with, if my memory serves, 64MB of RAM and
a 1.0GB hard disk on each. (Karl has not corrected my memory, and I'm
sure he's seen a copy or two of this FAQ). Each one can service
approximately 64 users when a terminal server is used. He has told
the world that the system is very solid and technical support is
superb - a rarity among operating systems, or any other software for
that matter. Source code license is $ 995.00; binary is $ 545. Once
you buy either initial license, a license for each additional machine
costs $ 250. Second-day Fedex shipping is included at these prices.
I believe they are willing to negotiate a site license for very large
numbers of machines. Karl Denninger will probably tell you you need
the source; he's modified it extensively. In addition, Eric Raymond
said, "Pay the $ 995. it's worth every
penny", and Mark E Mallett says, "I agree with the
support for the system." You can find out more about BSDI by mailing
to info@bsdi.com. The ability to use a BSDI system as a router may
make BSDI the system of choice for many providers; this could save you
about $ 1,300 or more, depending on configuration. So you could buy a
BSDI license for the money saved from the router alone. However, you
should read our section on Routers below before making that decision.
One possible dark spot in using BSDI is that there are fewer drivers
available for it. According to Mark Tempest ,
most card makers in the PC Unix market are concentrating on Linux and
SCO. Card makers are willing to send BSDI their cards, but BSDI
doesn't have the resources to create drivers for many of them. This
is one area where the distributed nature of Linux development is a
major plus; as long as someone, somewhere has the card, a Linux driver
is probably being written.
I have heard from someone (whose name I unfortunately forgot) that
BSDI is trying to wean its users off source code. In my opinion, this is
a mistake that's likely to turn people to competing systems with
source available, such as FreeBSD or Linux.
There is a pre-set product called the BSDI Internet Gateway Server
which is available in a 16-user license for around $ 995. I'm not sure
how different it is from the basic system, but it sounds like prices may
have gone up significantly since I last looked.
+.# PCs running Linux
I've revisited Linux recently because I finally decided to take
Windows off my IBM ThinkPad and replace it with Linux. So far, it's
worked quite smoothly, but I haven't used it for anything really
important.
I don't think there's any question that it will work fine as a web
server nowadays. The main deficiency with Linux has to do with PC
hardware, which just isn't designed to take large amounts of stress.
Your $ 2,000 PC may be an ok machine, but it's not designed to be on
all the time with its disk grinding like crazy as a typical
workstation is. Once you buy a machine really designed to take it,
you'll find the price surprisingly similar to "real" workstations like
Sun or SGI.
Linux seems to be the number one choice among providers coming up from
the BBS world. It could be thought of as the latest and best
continuation of the "Hacker Ethic", the belief that software should be
free, and people should get the source and play around with it. (For
information on the "Hacker Ethic", see Eric Raymond's
'The New Hacker's Dictionary' [Second
Edition]. It makes me nostalgic for the years of my adolescence, as a
ITS PDP-10 hacker at MIT. See the appropriate entries for details).
The lack of $ 1,000 licensing fees for the source code probably has
something to do with Linux' success over BSDI, as does the notorious
cheapness of computer hackers. Support, surprisingly enough, is
excellent. Post a question on the newsgroup, and you'll get friendly
answers with good information within hours. Although the networking
code is infamous for problems, I've had surprisingly little trouble
with it. My present system networks a 85mhz Sun clone with my Linux
PC; the Linux PC is connected to the Internet through a 28.8kbps SLIP
connection. Although it wasn't frightfully easy to connect,
everything is now working surprisingly well, with little trouble.
Even after over a year of operation, the system has successfully
withstood quite heavy loads. The main problem I've had is that the
system occasionally (once every two weeks or so) crashed due to SCSI
timeouts. However, this apparently was not a Linux problem; aiming a
large fan directly at my drives appears to have solved it completely.
Under the new regime, the system stayed up for 47 days without
crashing, a considerable improvement.
The Debian distribution is the most recommended one for ISPs, with
Red Hat also getting good marks. The Debian advantage is mainly in
better support for updates, both security-related and others.
If you get Linux, get on the big-linux@netspace.org mailing list (I
think email to big-linux-request@netspace.org will do this). You
should also check out the linuxisp list; send mail to
linuxisp-request@lightning.com to do so. People on these lists will
be able to tell you what kernel versions are stable. Depending on
which version you get, you may be anything from very happy with your
system to ready to throw it out the window. Don't give up on Linux
until you've tried a kernel others agree is stable.
A FAQ on being a provider using Linux is available at
http://www.anime.net/linuxisp/Linux-ISP-HOWTO.html .
It has to be said that the OS works very well, and I'm quite impressed
by it. I've heard that it's not good for a WWW server, however, and
since I think Internet Marketing is going to be an important part of
my business, I'm planning to move the WWW to a shiny new Sun clone box
I just bought (from, predictably enough, craig.warner@ceram.com, as
mentioned elsewhere in the FAQ). Because a multi-user Sun license is
very expensive, and because it would basically require that I buy an
(also expensive) terminal server, I am leaving my users on the Linux
PC. That might change as I grow more lines, since the multi-port
serial card approach is apparently not at all scalable for large
numbers of users.
The alternative to buying the Sun was to buy a Pentium/90 system and
run Linux or BSDI on it. Once you add up all the "free" components
included in your Sun, the price really isn't too different from that
of a high-end Pentium/90 system. It's also likely to be more
reliable, particulary when compared to Linux; many of the PCI bus
systems are not quite there yet.
Bryant Durrell tells us of one unfortunate aspect
of Linux. "I'd recommend it for small providers, but you must make
security one of your primary concerns, as it is not a system straight
out of the box; less so than most Unixes. You will have to make sure
you follow the various Linux newsgroups if for no other reason than to
stay up to date with that issue." He would like to remind you to
establish a shadow password file, which is covered in more detail
later. Fortunately, a shadow password file is mainly important to
those who are offering shell accounts; if you don't offer shell, you
may not need to use one.
+.# PCs running FreeBSD
Jordan Hubbard , director of the FreeBSD effort, was
kind enough to drop me a line with information on the status of
FreeBSD, a BSD derivative for PCs.
FreeBSD is a relatively new (about the same age as Linux) Unix variant
whose design goal is to combine the stability of BSDI/Berkeley Unix
with the free status of Linux. It has two major advantages over
Linux: (1) the code has been developed using a more structured
process, so it's likely to be more stable and have fewer bugs, and (2)
it's based on the BSD standard (as is BSDI), which many Unix users
feel more comfortable with. In an earlier section of this chapter, I
covered the big and ugly fight between old guard Sun users and Sun
Microsystems when the company switched its OS development to Solaris
(System V). The differences between FreeBSD and Linux are similar,
although Linux' diversion from the BSD path seems to be significantly
less serious than Sun's.
The main strength of FreeBSD has always been its networking code,
which has been honed and refined over the years of development at
Berkeley. FreeBSD continues this tradition thanks to a machine with
T1 access provided for the development team by cdrom.com, their
primary distributer. ftp.cdrom.com , that company's FTP server, gets
massive numbers of hits and has been very reliable using FreeBSD.
I attribute the lower popularity of FreeBSD to the following factors,
virtually none of which have anything to do with the quality of the
software:
(1) Due to the centralized development model, there are fewer drivers
available, and patches are slower to come out. As a potential user,
you should balance this with the fact that FreeBSD's software is
likely to be more reliable and contain fewer bugs, for the same
reasons.
(2) The libertarian ethos of the Linux development system, where just
about anyone can offer a driver through a complex, decentralized
network, appeals strongly to most users of the Internet. Linux is the
first system created whose development was, for all practical
purposes, developed based on the Internet model.
(3) Although both groups have their internal politics and differences,
the BSD camp seems to be more fractitious. I attribute this to the
more centralized model, which ensures that some people are firmly
excluded from participation; this is less likely to cause trouble
under the Linux model.
(4) Since FreeBSD is less well known, the newsgroups are far less
popular. When I last visited the general FreeBSD newsgroup for user
assistance (admittedly around a year ago), there were less than 10%
the messages on the Linux group, and a disturbing number were about a
rather nasty controversy within the development community.
In short, the adventurous user of free software should use Linux; the
more conservative user will be happy with FreeBSD. In addition, the
lover of uncensored, unadulterated BSD will most likely be much
happier with FreeBSD.
A mailing list for FreeBSD users, freebsd-isp@freebsd.org, has
been started. To subscribe, drop a line to majordomo@freebsd.org.
+.# PCs running SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) Unix
This Unix exists, and was basically the microcomputer standard for
some time. It was originally based on Microsoft's Xenix product,
although I think it's now a variant of Unix System V. It's quite
pricey, but few who've tried it would pick it over Linux. One
particulary important thing to remember about it is that only 64,000
i-nodes (files) are allowed on a file system, making it truly hopeless
as a news server. Even SCO's support, which you might consider a
major advantage of a commercial product, is rated as poor by those
who've used it. The bottom line is that either BSDI or Linux would be
better choices for a microcomputer Unix system.
A mild update: SCO has apparently listened to some of the screams of
its agonized users; they finally fixed that lack of inodes problem.
SCO is apparently also one of the few systems that can support
multiple processors, which is very good considering the low cost of
dual Pentium machines. The other system that can do this is Sun's
Solaris. There are unconfirmed reports of Linux support as well,
but this is probably a ways away.
According to Kevin Kadow, SCO recently purchased Unix System Labs
from Novell, which gives them ownership of the complete sources to
System V Release 4.2. It is not clear what they will do with it; "the USL
football has had many turnovers in the last few years."
+.# Other Unix Systems
The IBM RS/6000 and HP workstation users have a small
but vocal group of fans. However, again, I know little about them.
A few people have pointed to DEC Alphas as the current king of
workstation price/performance. However, the consensus seems to be
that these systems are sufficiently different from SunOS or BSD to
make installing networking software on them difficult. Particular venom
has been reserved for IBM and HP Unix versions, which are particulary
eccentric in many ways.
+.# Macintoshes running special MacOS Software
Tim O'Neill recommends a few new ISP resources. Check out how Digital
Forest won their Mac ISP spurs at
http://www.forest.net/advanced/isp.html . Also, check out
http://www.macisp.com/ for more Mac ISP information and resources.
Marcel Brown, mbrown@edwpub.com, has volenteered to update the state
of the Macintosh state for us. I asked him a few questions, he gave
me a few answers:
David: Can an all-Mac ISP be done?
It is possible to run a full range of Interet server software on the Mac.
Obvioustly HTTP, but others include FTP, DNS, RADIUS Authentication, NNTP,
SMTP, POP, NTP (Time), and TFTP. The various Mac implementations of Internet
software are generally very good, and in some cases are considered to actually
be better than other platforms' versions.
Terminal servers are a whole different story. Your platform of choice should
have no bearing on this decision. If you are serious about being an ISP, your
terminal server will be something like an Ascend, Cisco, or Livingston box. I
wouldn't set up an ISP, regardless of platform, with a computer hacked together
to be a terminal server.
David: Why set up a Mac ISP? What are the pros and cons?
The biggest pro in my opinion is ease of use (which directly translates into
time saved during setup and maintenance). I don't know about other ISPs, but
I'd much rather focus my time on giving the best customer support possible,
instead of figuring out arcane UNIX commands (or trying to make NT work
correctly). With Macs, I know that any problems can generally be fixed very
quickly, allowing the servers to do their job, and me do my job. It is
literally child's play to anyone familiar with Internet serving (which is a
different story altogether).
Big pro #2 is cost. It's been proven that Mac Web Servers have a huge
price/performance advantage over any other server. Sure, maybe a Mac Web server
can't keep up with a big UNIX box, but you can buy 3 or 4 Macs and cluster them
at a lower cost (and with much fewer headaches, not to mention better
redundancy) than one UNIX box. Now while there haven't been any studies showing
that other Mac servers besides Web servers show equal value vs. UNIX or NT, my
experience shows that the Mac servers' ease of us makes them an extremely
cost-effective solution. Going back to pro #1, the Mac's ease of use makes them
much cheaper to support than a UNIX or NT box. In order to support a Mac
server, you need to understand TCP/IP, general Internet theory, and (gasp!) the
MacOS. In order to support a UNIX or NT box, you need to understand TCP/IP,
general Internet theory, AND be well-versed in UNIX (or NT). Again, you can
spend your time learning UNIX/NT, or you can spend your time more
constructively (like supporting the customers that are paying your bills).
Cons:
The MacOS doesn't have pre-emptive multitasking or protected memory. However,
this isn't quite as big of a deal as it seems, because the lack of these
advanced features don't neccessarily make the MacOS less stable when running
server software. Of course, it still would be nice to have those features.
Certain software isn't availible for the MacOS. But then again, certain
software isn't availible for UNIX or NT, either.
Ummm ... that's about it. Really.
David: What about NExT/Rhapsody?
I'm glad you asked! Can you say UNIX power combined with the MacOS's ease of
use? Can you say Nirvana?
Anyone familiar with NeXT/OpenStep will tell you how great it is for many
things relating to serving. Dell computer might even tell you how they use
OpenStep for all thier big-time customers they always spout-off about in their
commercials (or maybe not anymore as Microsoft is suppossedly clamping down on
that). But anyway, Rhapsody is definitely going to make waves in the next
couple of years, because it will clearly be the best platform for just about
anything. Sure, you'll be able to run Rhapsody on Intel boxes, but why do that
when you can get true RISC performance from the PowerPC processor used in the
Mac today (not to mention real plug and play from the advanced Macintosh
architechture)? I simply can't wait for Rhapsody, as it will effectively wipe
out any cons to using the Macintosh as a server platform.
[28 June 1998] Rhapsody is going to be folded into the new MacOS X,
available sometime late in 1999. Basically, this will be the same
basic system as Rhapsody, with most MacOS APIs added to it; this makes
it absurdly easy to port MacOS programs, and thus a much more
compelling solution for Mac developers. This should guarantee that
the Mac will become a much stronger server platform in the future.
Here's some older information on the Mac, by a previous contributer.
Scott T Boyd, who wrote the earlier section on using MacOS software,
has been flooded with questions about how to set up a MacOS-based
ISP. Unfortunately, he doesn't consider himself qualified to answer
these questions for us. 
