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 I don't know of anyone who uses 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!
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.
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).
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 SparcStation 20s. 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 many admit that the PC 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 good compromise was recently suggested by the aforementioned Craig
Warner of Ceram. 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.
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.
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.
I was able to obtain a top-secret price list for SGI equipment with a
warning not to place it in my FAQ. (This is apparently a pretty
uniform policy for all international computer suppliers). However,
due to SGI's reputation for wretchedly high prices, I feel that I
should say that the basic system prices appear to represent very fair
value for the money when compared to Sun or the other top suppliers.
Peripherals are a bit pricey, but you can always buy them elsewhere.
The opposing view comes from Mark Tempest
"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. It's worth noting, of course, that no Unix system comes
totally secure out of the box; however, a great deal more is known
about securing Suns and BSDI boxes.
Steve Davies
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 Indy 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.
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
One possible dark spot in using BSDI is that there are fewer drivers
available for it. According to Mark Tempest
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.
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 Slackware distribution of Linux is the standard and is highly
recommended. The best deal is probably the Trans-Ameritech CD for
$ 30; mail roman@trans-ameritech.com for additional information.
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
Jordan Hubbard
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.
I know little about this, so someone else will have to fill in this
part of the FAQ. BSD is said have better-debugged networking code
than Linux, but support from the newsgroup doesn't seem to be as good.
I would say that Linux has at least 10 times as many newsgroup
readers, with proportionately better support chances.
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."
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.
Scott T Boyd
Just in a quick readthrough of the recommended equipment section, I noted a
stark paucity of information regarding using Macs as Internet boxes.
My entire net (admittedly a humble and small endeavor) is all Macintosh. I
serve up WWW pages, host multiple domains, have dial-in users, as well as
support AppleTalk network services for my users and several other sites out
on the wider Net.
While I won't claim that I'm impervious to hostile attacks, I far fewer of
the common unix security holes to worry about because many of my services
are not involved with unix.
And I'm NOT running any BBS software.
New Internet server software is coming fast and furious, with some
especially interesting services coming from Apple very soon.
I'm currently using the following items (all Mac software):
- MacHTTP
- MIND (DNS services)
- Macjordomo (nope, that's not a misspelling) for mailing lists
- FTPd
- MachTen (bsd unix which I use for ip routing, dns, ppp, mail, and other
assorted utilities); I hope to remove it from the equation before very
long, but I'm still relying on it until I've assured myself that some of
the newer software I want to use is up to the job.
- MacPing
- MacTCP Watcher (for testing out various connectivity/dns elements)
- AppleTalk Remote Access (for inward dialers)
- Apple Internet Router with IP WAN extension (for tunneling AppleTalk
through the Internet to other similar routers)
- Apple IP Gateway (lets ARA users get to my ip router)
I'm planning on using the following items sometime soon:
- MacDNS from Apple
- MailShare (POP/SMTP)
I will be testing out an ip router (non-unix) done as 100% Mac software shortly.
I wouldn't count Macs out as Internet servers. There's a very active
mailing list (apple-internet-providers@abs.apple.com) with a lot of
discussion from Apple-only or Apple-mostly or Apple-centric ISPs. The
ease-of-use that Macs are well-known for has extended into the Internet
server software arena. You simply can't beat how easily a MacHTTP server
can be set up. Drop some HTML files into a folder, launch the application,
and you're serving up web pages faster than you can say "Bite me unix!"
Best regards,
scott
Considering the high cost of running on this platform, it's
surprisingly popular. This is probably because it's the
best-developed graphical system we have, and so people looking for a
GUI think Macintosh first. At any rate, a couple of companies have
obligingly created BBS software that runs on the Macintosh and - at
least on paper - connects to the Internet. Like DOS-based software,
you get very poor newsreading ability.
One of these programs is called FirstClass, which includes a quite
nicely done graphical interface client. Unfortunately, their mailer
is notorious for disasterous behaviour when put on the Internet. For
some time before Canter & Seigel drowned them out, strange mail
problems from FirstClass hosts were a high-traffic topic on
news.admin.misc. Even though they may have fixed the problems by now,
I still cannot in good conscience recommend this software.
NovaLink is another Macintosh BBS program. Marlene Zenker
I'm afraid my conclusion about Macintosh BBS software is strikingly
similar to that about DOS software: It's not ready for prime time
yet. Perhaps at some point it will become a realistic, high-quality
alternative to Unix systems, but I'm not counting on it.
Can you spell C-R-A-S-H? I thought you could! I don't think anyone
has tried to use MS Windows software (such as the Excalibur BBS) to
run an Internet provider, or a multi-user site hooked up to the net.
However, the high-powered demands of Internet hookups are not going to
be frightfully friendly to the fragile Windows environment. In short:
Good luck finding anything that works, and don't tell me I didn't warn
you.
The overwhelming majority of Internet administrators do not believe NT
is the operating system of choice for an Internet service provider.
This is probably a rather kind description compared to what you'd
actually hear from a Unix user confronted with a question about NT.
It is a matter of record that Microsoft uses Windows NT as their FTP
server, named (with more hope than sense, perhaps) "gowinnt". It is
also a matter of record that Microsoft.com, their mail server, is a
SCO Unix box. Admittedly, Microsoft Windows NT is not, perhaps, quite
as unreliable as your copy of Microsoft Windows. Hopefully. In any
case, if they can't do electronic mail through NT, when they have the
strongest possible reason to do it, you probably can't, either.
Beware.
There are now a few hardy souls who have attempted to use NT as a
provider operating system. Some have had surprising success, and
others have felt the horror of dismal failure. I had a long dialogue
with one person who succeeded with NT; if you're pro-NT, don't give up
on this section until the end.
Larry Ash
Jeremy Porter
Michael Nelson
Michael Dothar (dothar@intersphere.com) writes us as follows:
(Begin long exerpt)
Been reading your faq again and thought I might offer some insight on the
cons and cons..er....PROS and cons of using NT and/or 95.
Web Servers:
O'Reily's Website (based on Bob Denny's WinHttpd port of
NCSA v1.4) runs quite well on NT. I had it running on a 16mb 486/66
under NT v3.50 for many months at 50k hits per day over a 56k line. CGI
is easy to write using NT Perl, VBv3 (though I hate basic), or C.
Win95 does not support this system nearly as well. I can see no reason
to use it over NT if you insist on using a Windows based product.
Netscape Commerce Server on NT, on the other hand, is pretty much bad
news. I mean, it 'runs' and all but there are many problems. It is
painfully obvious that Netscape's server product guys are Unix
programmers. The recomended procedure for running NT Perl scripts under
Netscape is very very insecure (I wrote a wrapper application called "run"
to handle the job). The C/C++ works better, but far from the standards
one would expect from a Unix box. There is a problem with the length of a
URL in Netscape, too. It seems to ignore characters somewhere after the
150th character in a URL. This was a problem for us in some applications
because of the need for encrypted data and state information on the URL.
We have not bothered with NSAPI (Netscapes method for writing modules
that link in with the actual server code instead of using external CGI)
because of our lack of comfort with the system as a whole.
In general terms, CGI under NT is a problem because of some basic problems
with DOS. Yes, Dos. You can't use an equals sign ('=') in a URL from a
console application (aka, Perl, Most C CGI, etc). This applies to
Netscape and O'Reily. I have not used Questar's product enough to
comment on it.
I prefer my Sun running NCSA v1.5 as a web server. I will be moving most
pages off of the Website/NT machine some time in the near future.
FTP:
I don't like NT FTP for a few reasons, most having to do with it using
the NT user registry for non-anonymous users.
For that reason I have used WFTPd from Texas Imperial Software
(alun@texis.com) v2.02 (32bit) for many months. It serves light
anonymous FTP duties, and allows me access to my NT/Win95 machines in my
office. It works. No complaints. I have not used it in a high load
situation, so I can not comment on it's viability for serving in a heavy
load situation.
DNS:
I use FBLI's DNS Service product for backup DNS on my network (primary is
provided by SunOS 4.1.4 named). It works well enough in this
environment. It configures just like a traditional UNIX based name
server. http://www.fbli.com/is the company home page.
Other:
For the record, Win95 is MUCH more stable than v3.11. The key, I have
found, is to install 95 in it's own directory. This goes agains MS's
suggested route of installing over the old Windows directory. Stability
is greatly increased if you install the system fresh this way instead of
trying to upgrade an old Windows or WFW system.
(end of long exerpt)
Other people have mentioned the high quality and variety of
Unix-based software as a major reason to continue using it.
When new systems come out, such as the Netscape WWW server,
they're developed for Unix first. This will probably continue
to be true for a long time to come.
But what about the good side of NT? Hasn't anyone managed to get it
to work? One brave soul, Bill Landry (blandry@questar.com), writes as
follows:
"I can tell you that we have been providing full Internet services on
nothing but NT servers for the last 5 months. I will admit that when
we started out we had to run 2 Unix servers because we could not find
sendmail, NNTP and DNS for NT. However, over the last 10 months we
have worked with companies to either port these services to NT, or
have companies that have written their own from scratch. I will admit
that everything we are running is beta at this stage; however, I must
also say that we have gotten nothing but compliments from our several
hundred customers that have switched to our server from other service
providers who are providing Unix solutions.
"Now, this is not to say that NT is a "better" Internet server. But
it is certainly close to being "as good" as an Internet server. We
provide dial-up 56KB, T-1, ISDN, Web, FTP, DNS, NNTP, SMTP, POP3, etc,
again, using nothing but Windows NT servers.
...
"The fact of the matter is that after using Unix for those first few
months of operation, NT has been a welcome relief. It is a far cry
from the command line shell of the Unix environment. It has been much
easier to implement, use, maintain and trouble shoot than the Unix
machines we were using."
He adds that technicians from all the companies that created their
software, including Microsoft, have visited his site and given
excellent support. However, he says that all is now running smoothly
without them, and he does not feel that the ISP who dares to run NT
applications would have much trouble.
I'm still wary, to say the least. NT might be easier to set up if
you're in isolation, without support from the mailing lists and
newsgroups that will help with Unix problems. I'd be surprised if
the informal support network for NT ever gets as good as the one
available for Unix.
Before you all leap out and pick up a copy of NT as your Internet
server, I would like to remind you of a few things and give you a very
personal plea not to run Windows NT.
If you believe, as I do, that Microsoft is the 1000 pound gorilla of
the industry, and that most of what it does is not in the long-term
interest of Internet service providers, you'd be well advised not to
volentarily give market share to Microsoft by using their server
products. Why help them out when they seek to destroy us?
Maybe you can run NT. Maybe you can run an operating system created
by a company that wants to kill off every online service but the
Microsoft Network. Maybe you can run an operating system made by the
same people who created the wretched mess that is Microsoft Windows.
Please don't.
[David's Amazing Internet Services proudly runs SunOS and Linux
servers]
How on earth does Microsoft get more and more coverage, even as its
software crashes on desktops everywhere?
Early returns seem to say that Windows 95 is either the greatest thing
since sliced bread, or the worst piece of trash to come down the pike
since its predecessor product, Windows 3.1. The one thing we can say
for sure about Windows 95 is that nobody - and that's nobody at all,
folks! - is neutral about it. It even made Doonesbury, with the
irresistable lines:
"What's wrong? Why's the new Windows balking?"
"It's greedy. It's holding out for 16 megabytes RAM ..."
"Hey ... It just turned on the printer!
It's a complete list of its demands!"
"Give no quarter. Hold it to the box specs."
Give no quarter indeed. Let that be my advice to you as well.
Until someone tells me otherwise, I will assume that it, like Windows
3.1, is totally unsuited for an ISP operating system. However, if
someone tells me more about the product, I'll do my best to listen.
O'Reilly & Associates currently sells a version of their Website web server
software for Windows95. I tried their 60 day free trial version on my
Windows95 system, a Pentium/75 with 16MB RAM. I attempted to process a
web server request while compiling a program in Visual Basic 3.0 (16-bit).
The web server ground to a halt during the compilation and started up
only after the compile was done. This is completely unacceptable performance
for any type of web server application. Microsoft claims that the new
32-bit applications will allow for multi-tasking; unfortunately, all the
32-bit applications I've tested are larger, slower and buggier than their
16-bit equivalents.
During typical programming use, I have to reboot my Windows95 system several
times a day, as it frequently runs out of memory and/or system resources.
Based on this experience, I cannot recommend Windows95 in good conscience
for ANY ISP operations.
I believe Windows95 to be roughly as stable as Windows 3.1 - which means
not stable at all.
OS/2 is a lot like Windows NT in its support for Internet services.
The main difference between Windows NT and OS/2 in this respect is
that Microsoft has actively promoted the former as an Internet server,
while IBM has been silent on the latter's virtues.
Lori A Martin
"I wouldn't run an Internet provider service on an OS/2 platform
because a Unix platform is best suited for it. However, I would feel
comfortable putting up our FTP site on an OS/2 machine, or running our
Web site on one, or running a gopher off it."
For OS/2 software, you can check ftp.cdrom.com:/pub/os2/network/tcpipfor client and server applications. You'll find plenty of WWW
servers, finger servers, gopher servers and FTP servers. There is
even a version of INN available, although I didn't see it in this site.
Dave Hughes
I promised the public that I would gracefully apologise for my earlier
statement that there were no OS/2 Internet servers other than for WWW.
Team OS/2, please accept my apologies for this most unfortunate libel
of a fine operating system.
Unfortunately, that doesn't make OS/2 a suitable machine for an
Internet service provider. However, if you were considering Windows
NT as a Web or FTP server system, you might want to seriously consider
OS/2; an 8MB OS/2 system would probably work just as well for a Web
server as a 16MB NT one. I suspect that setup isn't any more
difficult than NT's, and you certainly get a more modern user
interface.
When you get past a certain number of users, you will need to network
several systems together. This is, for example, the approach taken by
Netcom, which now has 23 SparcStations, massively equipped. Netcom's
well-known performance problems, discussed elsewhere in the FAQ, seem
to disappear when they buy new machines, and then pop up again 2-3
months down the road. When I first signed on to Netcom in March, they
had 13 machines. As of the time I'm writing this (14 March 1995),
they have 23. Right now, Netcom performance isn't bad, but if it
follows usual patterns, that won't last.
To start out in a very small way, you need at least 1 GB of hard disk
space. To store USENET news for any appreciable amount of time,
you'll need many times that. I can store about three weeks' worth of
ALT.* on the one 1.8GB Quantum hard disk I have dedicated to alt news.
(This includes the binaries groups, however, which you might want to
expire more quickly or not carry at all. I keep the binaries groups
for two weeks and the remaining groups for 25 days).
Jim Dixon (jdd@aiki.demon.co.uk) strongly recommends SCSI disk drives
and controllers; he is, of course, correct. You will wind up being
virtually forced into this route anyway, since most large hard disks
are available only as SCSI devices.
Eric Raymond
Sean Shapira
Jonathan Heiliger
marcln@on-ramp.ior.com was kind enough to drop me a line mentioning
that my comments on EIDE were somewhat out of date. "EIDE has become
the rage, and Western Digital offers a 1.2 gig HD 10ms for $ 399." I
believe, however, that SCSI performance is still superior, and you can
put more drives on a SCSI controller than an IDE.
Kevin Kadow seconds the many comments saying that IDE is a bad idea
for an Internet provider. He also reminds us that most Unix systems
can't go over 2GB per filesystem; as a result, there is really little
value in using drives larger than 2GB. (As a general rule, the more
separate drives you use on your system, the faster it will be).
Darrin Stadler (torin@daft.com) has dropped me a line with a new
modest update to this section. It seems like disk drive prices have
been dropping steadily as I wrote this. "... You quote someone as
EIDE drives being cheap at $ 399 for 1 gig. Well, you can get a SCSI
1 gig for the mid four hundreds in Computer Shopper. Another big
advantage is that if you have a PC and decide to move to Suns or SGIs,
you get to take your drives with you." I checked the Fry's
electronics ad in the latest issue of Microtimes, and it looks like
the price difference on 1.0-1.2GB drives is around $ 125. Not bad.
I presently have two 1.8GB Quantums. If I were to get a new drive
now, I'd probably get Seagate Barracudas - but you have to watch out
for cooling. Because INN wasn't designed to work well with a news
spool split between machines, I'm pretty much stuck using large SCSI
drives on one system, and I suspect most others will be too. For the
record, after reading Karl Denninger's comments on PCI's unstability,
I postponed my Pentium/90 PCI + 9GB drive purchase, which I
wanted to do together; I eventually got a Sun clone system instead.
I suspect either solution will work, but the first one appeals to me
because it requires no skill in mucking around with hardware.
According to Tony Sanders
Netcom gives each user 5MB of disk space a month, and charges for average
usage above that figure. So a gigabyte partition for users will only
last for about 200 users, and that only if you strictly enforce quotas.
SLIP/PPP accounts, which are likely to be the bulk of your offerings, don't
require you to offer disk space on your system at all.
Eric Raymond
Mark E Mallett
My own system runs a custom-written newsreader that doesn't have a .newsrc
file; it works with a list of newsgroups the user has entered. I've
found that most people have extremely small groups files; a typical
user directory (which I just checked) takes around 6k. The main key
to this performance is that I let people "browse" through all groups I
carry without putting them in the groups file; only groups that have
been read at least once go there. In Tin and other readers, every
group's status goes into the .newsrc file even if I've never read it,
since I want to be able to see all groups on the list (even if I never
enter more than a very small fraction of them).
I would figure on about 300MB for the operating system, 1GB for users and
2GB for news, meaning that your disk requirements should be around the
3.5-4GB mark. Eric Raymond (quoted previously) seconded this motion,
only noting that it should support significantly more users than I wrote.
I suspect the key to this is really FTP. I don't allow FTP yet on my
system, and won't until I have written a customized version that
automatically downloads files to the user's system. That should solve
most of the common problems with disk space.
[NB Has anyone done this yet? I'm having a hard time getting the
time for this particular venture, and my users are just salivating
(you can see it, honest! :-) ) for FTP ...]
The major problem with Sun, when compared to PCs running BSDI, is
that they're normally sold to consultants or major corporations who
know what they're doing. You can easily find someone to tell you
how to build a PC, but it's considerably harder to learn how to
put a Sun together.
Most of this information is from Craig Warner of Ceram, a company that
sells Tatung Sun clones. I talked to both him and my local Sun
reseller. For some reason, the latter kept on mumbling stuff about
"client-server" and "Oracle server applications" and such. He seemed
like a competent fellow, whom I could easily entrust my Oracle server
to. However, he seemed quite puzzled when I said that I actually wanted to
run and use Unix on my system, instead of controlling it remotely with
"easy to use" Windows applications through my Novell LAN. (I didn't
know I HAD a Novell LAN!) The effect was as though we were speaking a
different language.
Craig, on the other hand, struck me as a very nice, capable fellow who
was sympathetic to the needs of a budding ISP. "A starter kit, which
can grow to support over 1,000 customers, runs about $ 20k. This
includes modems (16-24), terminal server and SS20 type server. We
use a ratio of about $ 30-40 in capital per account. Most of this
capital has a useful life of 24-36 months."
Here's a detailed price breakdown of the Starter Kit:
Base SS20 Clone with CPU $ 4,000 SS20 model 50; includes graphics
64MB RAM 2,750
4.2GB disk 2,000
17" Sony monitor 1,000 20" Sony monitor $ 1,650
Sun-Bootable CD ROM drive 500 Plexor double-speed
Total base system 10,250 Compare this with other hardware prices
4mm tape backup 1,100 Exabyte 4mm DAT
28.8kbps Modems @ $ 250 each 4,000 28.8 external vfc, v34
Annex Terminal Server 5,000 32-port with software and cables
Power backup, misc cables, etc 1,500 UPS, surge protectors, ethernet
Total accessories 11,600
Total 21,850
This was a real-world system that was delivered to a client. "This site
was up and running quite quickly, and should scale well to 2,000-5,000
users. Additional hardware will be required, but the upgrades should
be smooth (add memory, processors, modems)."
On-site service on the system would run about 1% of value per month,
or around $ 218 for this system. This is for 8 hour/5 day week
service.
Surprisingly enough, when I got a quote on a Pentium system from a Linux
specialist dealer, it came out to only about $ 1,000 less than the Sun base
system cost listed above, for roughly comparable components. This system
includes a right to use license for the OS. Upgrading to an unlimited
license costs $ 660.00.
One suggestion made by my potential backer is that it would make sense
to buy a second machine to substitute for the main one if it broke down
for any length of time. This seemed like a sound idea to me as well.
Because you could use a used SS10 for this, it might not be as expensive
as you might think - around $ 7k or so would do it. Craig Warner
course, endorses this idea: "Yes, this is a good strategy. It surprises
me how few ISPs have a backup machine, given the cost of unscheduled
down time."
Craig can be reached as craig.warner@ceram.com. His online catalogue
can be accessed at http://www.ceram.com/
Sidebar: RAID Disk Arrays, the Technology of the Future! Well,
maybe. I asked my Sun reseller about the Sun's really neat-sounding
something or other-100 disk array subsystem. It turns out that the
thing is so fantastically expensive as to be way out of sight:
$ 24,999 for 6GB and $ 59,000 or so for 30GB. Gulp. Maybe I don't
want one THAT badly.
I asked Craig Warner (yep, him again!) about the relative merits of the
various Sun models.
"Generally, a MicroSPARCII Machine (SS5) can support 25-50 users as you
describe, or perform specific functions (i.e. news machine, WWW server,
etc). The SS20 machines can support up to 150 users with currently
available CPUs. Since the CPUs are modular on these machines, newer
CPUs (now in the pipeline) will increase this capacity - probably to
around 250 users.
"On almost all configurations, a ratio of approximately 2 MB of memory
per simutaneous user is a good rule of thumb. Inadequate memory will
cause the system to start virtual paging - which will quickly bring
the system to a crawl.
"As a good case study, the main interactive server at Clark Internet
Services is a SS10 (the SS20's predecessor), with 2 60mhz SuperSparc
processors (fastest available). The machine has 250MB RAM and
supports a peak load of about 150 users, from a customer base of
3-4000. They use a similar configuration, but with less memory
(128MB) for the news system."
His Internet Starter kit (see above) is a SS20 with the 50mhz processor,
about 20% slower than the 60mhz model mentioned above.
Since this was written, he seems to have changed his mind slightly
about the best machine to get for a provider. He now suggests
getting a network of 85mhz SS5s (about the speed of a single, 50mhz
SS20), which can be had for around $ 5,000-6,000 each. There's no
real savings, since you'll still need about two of them to handle the
150 users a SS20 could. But the incremental cost to get started is
lower, and the smaller load on the smaller machine seems to make
performance more sprightly (probably due to the lower load on the
local disks and other peripherals).
Right now, I'm looking at a drop-dead gorgeous picture, and all it
cost me was $ 2,595.00. That's right: the final stage in my quest for
the perfect monitor led me to a NEC XP21, a beautiful but hideously
expensive piece of equipment.
The saga began when I wanted a 20-21" colour monitor for the new Sun
clone system. My Sun vendor (aka Craig.Warner@ceram.com) recommended
the standard 20" Sony, and I ordered it. When it got here, I learned
that it had a .31 dot pitch, making the picture a little blurry. As a
result, I returned it to him and decided to get a NEC, my favourite
brand.
The NEC XE21, an otherwise beautiful unit, won't work with Suns. It
goes up to a maximum resolution of 1024x768, despite what you may have
heard in some literature, and as a result it was not really Sun
compatible. The proper Sun compatible unit, complete with BNC
connectors, is the XP21.
So how much better is the $ 2,595 XP21 monitor than the $ 1,600 Sony? In
truth, unless you're as persnickity as I am, you probably won't notice
much difference. One major advantage of the NEC, however, is that it
has both BNC connectors and standard PC ones; a front panel switch
lets you switch between them on the fly. So if you use both Suns and
PCs for various applications, but don't need to view them at the same
time, the NEC is truly your dream monitor. (I do Windows development
on a laptop PC, so being able to use it at home with the big NEC is
particulary nice).
If you don't have that kind of money, there are a lot of 19" Hitachi
monitors around that you can get very cheaply. Unfortunately, picture
quality is often (usually) poor. In particular, the tiny type used by
many Sun windows is just too blurred to read.
I strongly recommend a 20" or above monitor for your Sun system (or
any computer running X-Windows, for that matter). Any smaller and
you'll be squinting like crazy. Pity they're so expensive.
I noticed that X-Windows is so unmerciful on small monitor users that
one ISP I know actually prefers using the Windows-based net browsing
programs from a PC! Horrors!
My Linux system, which doesn't run X, has a 15" NEC 4FG monitor, which
works fine on the text console. Many people would say it's a bit of
overkill, but it definitely soothes my eyes after a tiring day. As
does the new XP21. And isn't that what a good monitor's for?
A major problem that you may face with disks is overheating,
especially if you put more than one in the same cramped PC case.
People who have bought Seagate Barracuda drives are especially
vunerable, since they run very hot due to their high speeds. However,
even my twin 1.8GB Quantums suffer from overheating; the symptom is a
"SCSI Timeout" error and the subsequent need to switch off the
computer and wait about three hours before turning it back on.
There are two somewhat contradictory recommendations: The first one
is to open the case and get a conventional small fan blowing across
the drives. This is the solution I'm presently using; my system has
now been up for 35 days, when it would rarely hit 14 before.
The other recommendation is to leave the case on, because it aids air
circulation, but buy a small internal fan and place it near the
drives.
According to Kevin Kadow, Seagate and Maxtor drives are particulary
prone to a problem where the platter lubricant "cooks" from the heat.
The main symptom is that the drive works great - as long as you don't
turn it off. If you turn it off and let it cool, the head becomes glued to
the platter, and the drive will not be able to come up to speed when you
power it back up. "If this occurs, a good whack on the side of the drive
will either jog the head enough to get it flying, or rip the head off the
carrier, destroying the drive and all its data. Either way, the problem is
solved."
This is an amazingly long section, so I'll give you the straight scoop
in the first paragraph, and you can read more if you're curious. The
Sun Netra is said to be a "plug and play" "Internet Server" system,
designed to hook up DOS and Macintosh networks to the Internet. As a
result, it looked intriguing to many ISPs and would-be ISPs struggling
with their configuration files. The straight dope, however, is that
Sun's own engineers say that the Netra is really meant only as an
interface between the Internet and a large corporate internal network.
As a result, it is completely unsuitable for use by an Internet
provider. Full stop; that's it.
Now for the details.
Here's the scoop on the Sun Netra Internet Server as my Sun reseller
explains it. You buy it and put it in your closet. You plug it in to
your network and your Internet provider, switch it on, and a soft
female voice tells you what it's doing. In about 10 minutes, it
silently comes up and starts running. You can then close the closet
door on it forever; it's controlled through Windows applications set
up on a Novell LAN. If you want to provide Internet services to
people outside your organization, it appears to be a non-starter. It
might work, however, if all you want to do is set up a WWW server.
Jamie Saker
So that this FAQ doesn't balloon to a truly frightful length on this
question alone, I will summarize what the two agreed on, and mention
the areas of disagreement. The remarkable thing about this particular
situation is that neither party disagreed a frightful lot; I think Sun
wrote me on this issue mainly so I would remove some of the more
hostile words from this document.
Here is precisely what Mike Gelder of Sun wrote in his message about
the target market for a Netra server:
"Prospective buyers who are knowledgeable about Unix, the Internet,
Domain Name Services, sendmail, POP3 and all the other
parts-and-pieces that needs to be manually configured and maintained
are probably better off buying a standard Sun SPARCstation 5 or 20
instead of a Netra i. They would find the Netra i limited in its
flexibility as it pertains to a general computing role."
This is a key paragraph. It's equivalent to "If you're an Internet
Provider, don't buy a Netra; buy a SS5 or SS20 instead". In short,
precisely what Jamie Saker and his fellow Netra critics have told us.
Who would want the Netra, then? Someone who wants a "no fuss, no
muss" connection of his users to the Internet, strictly as a client
system. That is, people would use the standard Windows or Macintosh
Internet utilities, such as Netscape, Hgopher or Microsoft Mail.
Packets would flow through those PCs into the Netra and hence out into
the Internet; the Netra would handle sendmail, POP, etc,
How do the critics disagree with this?
The good news, they say, is that the Netra has achieved its goals of
being extremely easy to set up. You can set it, lock it in that
closet and leave it forever untouched.
The bad news is that it doesn't include Internet service servers such
as WWW and Gopher. As Jaime Saker comments, "Sun's marketing has
convinced users that they're getting a fully functional 'Internet
Server'."
According to Michael at Sun, this was a deliberate design decision:
"At the time the Netra i was introduced, the licensing constraints and
potential support problems associated with distributing public domain
software were a great business concern. Utilities such as NCSA Mosaic
and Netscape WWW viewers were in constant development. A decision was
made NOT to ship utilities of this kind with the Netra i in its first
release. As described above, the role of the Netra i did not mandate
that a complement of Internet access tools should be provided with it.
Thus the decision was made to keep it simple (in the first release)
and supportable."
He suggests that ISPs might want to provide pre-configured Netras to
their LAN customers, such as companies getting 56k or T1 links with
them.
"Buyers who want quick out of the box access to their Internet
provider get exactly that with Netra i. An Internet Service Provider
reselling Netra i systems has the ability to ship a configuration
floppy with the system that contains information specific to the
installation site and service provider. Upon power-up, the system
takes about two minutes to read the disk, configure itself
accordingly, initialize the interfaces and begin acting as a local
resource for DNS, POP3 mail clients, etc. If the system disk
crashes, a similar operation with the CD ROM OS release and the same
configuration floppy will rebuild and reinitialize the system (with a
new hard disk) in about 30 minutes. The ease of configuration and
servicability is what is being sold with Netra i."
In his review of the Netra, Jaime Saker said, "Documentation is
horribly poor." Michael's response is that, since the Netra was
designed for a purely limited role, extensive documentation would have
been a burden, not an aid. I might add that the documentation that
came with my SS5 clone's SunOS media/documentation CD package would
have been a big disappointment had I not been warned about it in
advance; there is a single installation volume and nothing else. So
you won't solve the documentation problem purely by getting a Sun
system with SunOS. (It is claimed by Sun that the Solaris
installation with the Sun Answerbook CD contains voluminous
documentation; I have to say that I'd rather have some I can heft).
Jaime Saker noted that the Netra has no C compiler included; this is
true even of new Solaris systems. The Free Software Foundation has
pre-compiled binaries of Gnu GCC for Solaris readily available.
SunOS, incidentally, does include a C compiler that's good enough to
compile GCC.
Jaime Saker says that his early production Netra does not support
video, even as an optional Sun board. Michael's response is that this
is very logical, since the system is designed to be locked in a closet
and not used. However, later Netras apparently no longer have this
restriction; you can now attach video to it if you really want to.
Jaime's comment on the "unacceptable" support is worth quoting in
full, at least for its humour value:
"Sun tech support, helpdesk and other support interfaces claim to
have no knowledge of the Netra. (In fact, Sun's helpdesk was
convinced that Netra must be a third-party software package.
Describing the box with Sun's logo, the literature, serial/model
numbers, etc. did not help. How can Sun support a product it denies
exists?)"
Michael concedes this basic point, but adds that support has now been
substantially improved.
Finally, Jaime makes this comment on his overall reaction to the
system, as compared to other machines he evaluated:
"Price-Performance ratio is dismal: Hewlett Packard HP 9000 712/60,
equally equipped in terms of memory and hard disk, plus 15" monitor, a
full OS, and a somewhat functional (enough to compile gcc/t++)
compiler is LESS than the Netra with NO video, monitor, compiler, etc."
Michael's response is that they put a great deal of effort into trying
to make the Netra extremely easy to use, and that it is well worth the
extra cost for Unixphobes and people who just don't have the time to
learn Unix.
So, although FAQ readers now know a lot more about the Netra than we
did at first, it has to be said that the conclusion is obviously the
same: No ISP worth its salt would buy a Netra; it's aimed at a
completely different audience. For that audience, it's probably a
very nice product.
Tony Sanders, founder of the Inet-Access mailing list, has compiled
some hardware information for use with BSDI systems. Much of this
should also apply to Linux as well, although (to my knowledge), Linux
does not yet have support for routing cards.
-- Here's Tony's document, reproduced with minor editing: --
These specs are intended for users building a high-performance,
Internet-ready PC fileserver or workstation class machine using BSD/OS
from Berkeley Software Design, Inc. Of course, users building more typical
configurations should also find it helpful as it lists resources for some
of the harder to find items.
This does not contain a complete list of supported hardware; please contact
info@bsdi.com for details on the operating system, a complete supported
hardware list, or with any questions you may have.
OS:
BSD/OS V1.1
BSDI World Headquarters
Berkeley Software Design, Inc.
7759 Delmonico Dr.
Colo. Spgs., CO 80919 USA
Toll Free: +1 800 800 4BSD
Phone: +1 719 593 9445
Fax: +1 719 598 4238
Email: info@bsdi.com
CPU:
486DX2/66 or Pentium
BUS:
ISA/EISA/PCI/VLB
For applications that are mostly network or CPU-bound a system with
an ISA bus will work fine, especially if you toss in a VLB disk
controller. You can get a perfectly good system this way and save
yourself some bucks.
Those with a bit of daring, after the cutting-edge in performance,
will probably want to try PCI. There have been some initial problems
with PCI but it is possible to get a working system with a bit of care.
Billy at ASA Computers can help you. Rumer is that most of the
initial problems with PCI 2.0 have been resolved. As always,
buyer beware (and shop with a vendor you can trust).
A good resource for all kinds of hardware (and who knows what else):
ASA Computers
+1 408 496 6853 [ext 201 -- Billy]
+1 408 988 0359 (fax)
+1 800 REAL PCS
Multi-Port Board:
Digiboard PC/Xem [~$1400 for 16 port card], can go to 64 ports.
RISCom/8 is a good price/performance alternative for less demanding loads.
[Note from the FAQ maintainer: For Linux, check out the Boca 2016
16-port serial board, which works fine on my system].
Router Card:
With the RISCom/N2, RISCom/H2, and RISCom/N1 synchronous cards you
can connect your BSD/OS directly to your 56K or T1 line and avoid the
extra cost of an router; probably saving your company thousands of
dollars! BSD/OS supports both CISCO HDLC and synchronous PPP framing
for compatibility with most service providers. Frame Relay support
is being worked on right now.
RISCom/N2 (56K to T1) -- Connects via V.35 to a standard CSU/DSU
RISCom/N2-S (approx $500) -- single port
RISCom/N2-D (approx $695) -- dual ports (very nice for routing hubs)
Mention BSDI when ordering to recieve special rates for BSDI customers.
Prices are approximate and subject to change.
The RISCom/N1 and RISCom/H2 cards are supported at 56K.
Available from:
SDL Communications Inc.
130 Liberty Street
Bronkston, MA 02401
+1 508 238 4490
For information on Internet Access Providers see:
http://yahoo.com/Business/Corporations/Internet_Access_Providers/
ISDN is not yet directly supported (and we have not identified a
target card yet) but several people have reported using the
Combinet ISDN modem (120Kb/second):
Combinet
333 West El Camino Real, Suite 240
Sunnyvale, California 94087
+1 408 522 9020 (voice)
+1 408 732 5479 (fax)
ISDN BBS: telnet combinetu.combinet.com (login: isdn)
For more information about ISDN see:
http://www.crimson.com/isdn/ http://www.crimson.com/isdn/vendorinfo.html http://www.icus.com/ http://alumni.caltech.edu/~dank/isdn/
Ethernet:
3COM 3C579 Etherlink III -- EISA
3COM 3C509 Etherlink III -- ISA
TNIC 1500 Transition Eng Fast ISA busmaster DMA NIC
South Coast Computing Services, Inc.
PO BOX 270355
Houston, TX 77277-0355
Email: info@sccsi.com
+1 713 661 3301
+1 713 661 0633 (fax)
Firewalls:
Setting up a firewall is recommended by many network experts
for additional security for your site.
The ``screend'' packet screening software package is available from
ftp.vix.com:pub/vixie/screend*. This package can be used to build an
IP firewall using your BSD/OS system.
You can get ``fwtk'' (firewall toolkit) from ftp.tis.com:pub/firewalls.
TIS also makes a commercial version called Gauntlet:
Trusted Information Systems
3060 Washington Road
Glenwood, MD 21738
Email: info@tis.com
+1 301 854 6889
SCSI:
Adaptec 1740/1742 EISA SCSI host adapter (Minimicro +1 800 275 4642)
BusLogic (BusTek) BT-946C PCI SCSI host adapter (w/firmware 4.21 or higher)
BusLogic (BusTek) BT-747A EISA SCSI host adapter
Disk space as required (Fast SCSI-II). 500MB-1GB is a reasonable
starting place for many configurations.
Corporate Systems Center
1294 Hammerwood Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
+1 408 734 DISK
+1 408 745 1816 (fax)
[Good resource for drives and other peripherals, new and refurb]
A full Usenet News feed will eat a *lot* of disk space (at the very
least 2GB) as well as disk performance. You should use multiple
smaller disks instead of one big disk to increase disk throughput and
minimize seek times (probably 3-5 2GB disks depending on how long
you want to keep stuff around).
Double or Triple speed SCSI CDROM (you can get a cheap drive if you
are just going to use it for installation). If you intend to really
use it you'll want a drive that supports SCSI disconnect or else it
will impact SCSI performance.
8mm Exabyte or 4mm DAT Tape Backup
Consider a Magneto-Optical system for site archives.
Video For Workstations:
Xstones Chipset Video Adapter
* 450,000 ??????? Number Nine -- #9 GXE128
* 350,000 MGA-II Matrox MGA Ultima
* 220,000 MACH64 ATI Ultra Pro Turbo (MACH64)
???,??? MACH8 ATI Ultra Pro (MACH32)
150,000 MACH8 ATI Ultra (MACH8)
* Supports resolutions upto 1600x1200
Others support resolutions upto 1280x1024
BBS/Menuing Software:
ftp.solinet.net:/pub/src/menu.tar.gz (src dist.)
ftp.solinet.net:/pub/src/unixmenu.SCO.tar.gz (BSD/OS src/bindist)
ftp.solinet.net:/pub/src/yum.tar.gz (BSD/OS src/bindist)
Other possible sources:
Eric Raymond's? Menushell? UniBoard BBS by
TNSDrive by Vladimir Vorobyev
[if you have any suggestions for this section please send them
to sanders@bsdi.com]
News:
INN (available from ftp.bsdi.com:contrib/news)
PageSat (Usenet News by Satellite) +1 415 424 0384
approx: $565 equipment, $30 a month (1 year contract).
One person on the inet-access mailing list (see below) commented:
:: The chief reason there are holes is that PageSat is delivered via
:: satellite. When it rains hard, we lose the signal, and they don't
:: retransmit any data. The other big problem is that they only have about
:: 100MB/day of bandwidth (synchronous 9600bps == 1200cps). Usenet is
:: currently around 130MB/day, so they have an obvious lag problem.
:: Even with these problems, PageSat is worth it because it eases about
:: 100 MB/day of bandwidth off of my lowly 56k circuit.
Note that a 56Kbps link is ~590MB/day of bandwidth. Of course you
aren't going to get that in practice and during peak usage things can
get pretty bad, so offloading 100/MB of real work could be a big win.
SLIP/PPP:
Basic SLIP/PPP client/server code included with BSD/OS. For a more
advanced setups you might want to check out Morningstar PPP:
Morning Star Technologies Inc.
1760 Zollinger Road
Columbus OH USA 43221-2856
Email: Marketing@MorningStar.Com (sales e-mail)
Email: Support@MorningStar.Com (technical e-mail)
FTP: ftp.MorningStar.Com:pub/
WWW: http://www.MorningStar.Com/ +1 614 451 1883
+1 800 558 7827 (Toll Free USA and Canada)
+1 614 459 5054 (fax)
Internet Access Providers Mailing List:
This is a mailing list for people to discuss issues about being
an Internet Service Provider. The list is not BSD/OS specific.
EMail inet-access-request@earth.com to join the list.
Things to consider:
Administration machine
DNS, News, telnet, FTP, gopher, WWW
Fileserver
Firewall
Shell Accounts
Modem Pool/Terminal Server
Configurations for Mac/DOS/Windows clients:
Draper Kauffman, Ed.D.
-- End of Sanders document --
Eric Raymond's excellent PC-Clone Unix Hardware Buyer's Guide is
available at http://www.ccil.org/~esr/clone-hw-guide/contents.html.
Updates of Tony Sanders' listing of hardware for BSDI users can be
found at the BSDI Web site, http://www.bsdi.com.
Additional hardware and software information can be found in my Web
site list for Internet providers, http://www.amazing.com/internet/
Bryan Taylor
To try starting an ISP, all you really need is a 14.4kbps or 28.8kbps
modem and a resellable SLIP connection to another provider. This is
my current situation, as I try to gauge receptivity to my ideas and
tune up the software. Unfortunately, resellable SLIP may be difficult
and/or expensive to obtain.
Aaron Nabil of internetworks (i.net) was kind enough to write a
response with some interesting comments about resale. Actual resale
policies vary depending on the vendor you select. "If you call one up
and ask if they permit 'resale', to which they answer no, you
shouldn't go away thinking they can't help you." Perhaps they can.
Examples of different policies, from Aaron's message:
* ANY TIME you make money from the connection, even if you just
charge people to access a Gopher or WWW server, or sell products
through that server. (Seattle providers)
* Selling shell access to a computer connected to them is resale
(Netcom). (He actually said "Netcom?", but I know from asking
them that this is indeed the case).
* Selling permanently addressed IP is "resale", transient IP isn't
(Possibly Alternet)
* Selling any IP is resale, but shell access isn't. (Internetworks
[i.net, his company], most other providers
* We don't care what you do. (Sprint, free-nets, ISI Network Associates).
(I added ISI because I happen to know this is their policy).
So, if you find a vendor and discover that they are not amenable to
resale of their connection, make sure you know the precise definition
thereof. You might be pleasantly surprised. You may also want to
ask if they can "work something out"; special arrangements are possible.
The next step above SLIP is a direct connection at a 56kbps data rate
(double the speed of a 28.8 modem). The TLG Leased Line FAQ explains
why a 56k is significantly better than a 28.8 SLIP; it has to do with
latancy rates and other neat concepts I don't remember. I will later
summarize portions of that FAQ here. TLG has some excellent FAQs and
other information on connecting to the Internet at http://www.tlg.net/.
To deal with more than a very small number of customers on a paying basis,
you will need a 56k or T1 connection hooked up to an internal network.
For this, you need the following equipment:
- A Router. This is a box that hooks up to your local network and sends
out packets destined to the Internet, while leaving your local packets
in your local network. You can theoretically program a PC (using BSDI
software) as a router, but the rather vague impression I get is that
this is for true experts only.
Aaron Nabil of i.net comments: "Well, it's not necessarily for experts,
but don't expect your carrier to help you fix it if it breaks."
Tony Sanders
On the question of why Linux or other free Unix systems can't be
used in the same way, Tony writes: "I think the problem is that they
don't have support for any interface cards that talk to a CSU/DSU.
Of course, that may have changed." Some inventive Linuxer is
bound to change this eventually, but until then that seems to
give BSDI a strong edge.
Further information on the subject of using a BSDI box as a router
is included at the end of this FAQ as Appendix A due to its extraordinary
length (circa 400 lines).
A counter-argument against using the BSDI box as a router comes from
Scott Hinnrichs
BSDI fans respond by noting that if you know what you're doing, it's
reassuring to have the source code to tinker with if things go wrong,
or if you need to add specialized features to your system. The best
bottom-line remark I read about this came from Paul Vixie
In summary, the BSDI routing might be an acceptable solution if you
have an ageing 386 around that you could dedicate just to the router,
although even then security might be a legitimate problem. Certainly
the router hardware and software shouldn't run on a machine that's
used for any other activity.
i.net is one of the few providers with the guts to list actual costs
associated with the connection, including equipment. They charge $ 2,200
for a Cisco 2501 router. It can route packets up to the T1 level,
and should do fine for most providers. "The Cisco is the benchmark
of routers, the reference by which other routers are judged." Its
main limitation is that it has only a single ethernet port and
two serial ports, so it's pretty much limited to going from your
internal network to the Internet. More expensive routers, like the
Cisco 7000 series, can handle several such concurrent connections,
and thus pass packets between several different internal networks.
For almost all start-up providers, the 2501 should be sufficient.
[I believe there are now routers that also serve as terminal servers;
hopefully someone who actually knows something about hardware can
contribute something on this vital subject].
For $ 1,700, Internetworks will also sell you a IRX-11, which will
also handle 56k and T1 connections. "It's just not as nice a router
as the Cisco."
Net-99 is giving a 20% discount on CISCO routers and other equipment
if you become a customer. They do not presently sell to non-customers.
- A CSU/DSU. About $ 550 (again, using i.net's price sheet) for 56k or
$ 1,300 for T1. This is the equivalent of a modem - it translates
the router's output into a signal that can zip through the telco's
lines.
Aaron: There are cheaper brands for 56k, such as Adtran or Bat, that
sell for about $ 250. "Try to get a 56/64k CSU/DSU if possible."
Sean Shapira
- A local area network to connect your router to your other computer(s).
This could be an ethernet card in your system and Ethernet connections
or 10Base-T, involving a hub and other stuff. (Someone else might
want to flesh this out; this was modified through suggestions from
Aaron Nabil and Sean Shapira). If you use your sole BSDI box as
a router, you might be able to skip this, but most providers with
a T1 or greater need a network to split their load between multiple
machines.
- Cables to hook everything together. They're easy to forget, but,
according to Aaron, "they are non-trivial!"
Depending on your specific Internet provider, you may need to provide
the router and CSU/DSU at (a) your own site only; (b) at your site and
their site. Some connections, called "full service", will provide
the equipment and maintenance at both sites; a good example of this
is CERFNet. This can be contrasted with ISI Network Associates, which
requires you to provide the equipment on both sides. Naturally, ISI
is a LOT cheaper than CERF. However, for a 56k connection, i.net is
cheaper even than ISI, and they provide the router on their end.
Go figure.
To start receiving calls from users, you need modems, telephone lines
and one or more multi-port serial cards or terminal servers.
No less than two people have written me with a simple question: What
is a terminal server, anyway, and how do you connect all those lines
to your PC? A terminal server is a device that has a whole bunch of
serial ports and a single Ethernet output. The serial ports connect
to your modems, and the Ethernet port connects to your network. Your
network, in turn, is hooked up to the system that runs your user
accounts. So people call in to the terminal server and connect to
your machine. For reasons I still haven't quite figured out, this is
far more efficient than a multi-port serial card. I think it has
something to do with Ethernet protocols being more efficient
than the direct handling of serial ports.
One major advantage of a terminal server is that you can program it
to connect people telnetting in to one or more different machines.
For example, if you had 3 systems for your shell or BBS accounts, you
could tell the terminal server to route your first call to machine
one, your second to machine two, and so on, thus equalizing the load
between the machines. If one of them went down, you could instantly
reprogram the terminal server to direct future calls to one of the
other machines. This would be very difficult to manage with a multi-
port card and modem setup.
Walter Vose Jeffries
The other way to hook up large numbers of modems to your PC is through
a multi-port serial card. This is a simple card that fits in your PC.
The servicing of this card takes a considerable amount of CPU time,
although this can be somewhat relieved by buying an "Intelligent"
serial card like the Cyclades. The big advantage of this approach is
that it's a great deal cheaper than a terminal server. A 16-port
terminal server costs around $ 2,000. A 16-port serial card costs
around $ 250 (for the BocaBoard 2016; see my Boca FAQ for more
information). A major disadvantage of this approach is that you're
limited to about 16 ports per machine, 32 if you're lucky. A Sun
SparcSTATION 20 using terminal servers can support around 150 users.
So if you factor in the cost of extra computers per 16 or 32 lines,
the terminal server starts to look like a more reasonably priced
solution.
[NOTE: The rackmount modem section is in development and this may contain
some inaccurate information].
MODEMS: Many people swear by rack-mount USR or other big name modems.
You can do all sorts of neat things with them, such as remote test and reset
of individual lines. Unfortunately, they cost about triple what
low-end standalone units do. Low-end standalone units are more likely
to not connect properly after a disconnection. This appears to be
especially true of US Robotics Sportster units, although their high-end
modems are superb. I've had excellent success with Intel 144e modems,
which cost all of $ 99 each. One note on the Intels: They have
apparently changed their design significantly in the last few months.
The newer ones are instantly recognizable by their roughly square
power bricks; the older ones were clearly rectangular. The difference
relevent to Internet providers is that the older ones support "at&q6"
to turn on error correction and autobauding. The comparable
command for the new series is "atb0\j1". The \j1 turns on autobauding
and the b0 specifies CCITT mode. Note that the "\j1" will have to
be typed in as "\\j1" on most Unix systems. Unfortunately, Intel
is apparently getting out of the modem business. I, for one,
will miss them.
Alicia Salomon (salomon@seas.gwu.edu) was kind enough to send me a
price list for US Robotics rackmount modems. I have to say they
seemed pretty forbidding, even with special "Internet Pricing". The
basic chassis, including "dual power units and the Network Management
Card Set (NIC/NAC)" is $ 3,810. From what I gather, this gives you
the ability to reset and reassign modems remotely by connecting to the
modem's ethernet slot and giving them commands. You then must buy a
Dual T1 card set for $ 2,701 to hook these modems to a T1 line, which
can then be brought in to your network. A modem card, which contains
four modems, costs around $ 2,000 (again with the special pricing).
So if you wanted to start with 16 lines, it would cost a eye-popping
$ 14,511; 16 Intel 144e modems would run only $ 2,240. Filling the box
to its 48-line capacity would cost $ 38,511, while 48 144es would
cost $ 6,720. However, this is not quite a fair comparison, since
this price apparently includes the equivalant of a terminal server,
which would otherwise cost somewhere around $ 2,000 for 16 lines.
Despite this, I suspect the rackmounts have their place. If you have
a POP that's remote from your main business location, you might not be
able to go there and physically reset the modems in any reasonable
period of time. With that situation, rackmounts might actually be the
best solution, since you'd just reset them via your network. An
alternative would be to build your own remote switching device, so you
could remotely switch the modems on and off when they needed to be
reset. Even hiring someone to design and build such a thing might be
cheaper than a rackmount modem box.
Sean Shapira
Bryant Durrell
Eric S Raymond
"We got our nonprofit ISP started using a super-cheap modem
called a LineLink 144e, built around the Rockwell data-pump chip (same
one used in the Zoom and Boca modems) and costing $105. We hooked our
modems to SDL RISCOM/8 multiport boards, the brand recommended by
BSDI. This setup has worked pretty well, except for one major problem --
when UNIX on our 50MHz box hangs up, the DTR-low interval goes by
so fast that the LineLink sometimes fails to see it. This causes the
modem to hang in the off-hook state, blocking the line and requiring a
manual reset. I worked around this by patching a 250msec delay into
the RISCOM driver's DTR-pulldown code. This fix may become
unnecessary when RISCOM releases the next driver version, which is
supposed to do true hardware handshaking on the modem lines."
Incidentally, the setup I have under Linux, featuring a BocaBoard
2016 16-port serial card and $ 139 [now $ 99] Intel 144e modems, has
worked flawlessly with no installation problems at all.
MULTI-PORT EQUIPMENT: Your modems have to connect to your computer,
which normally has two or fewer available serial cards. How to do
this? There are three basic ways:
DUMB CARDS: These cards give all processing to your system's CPU,
which makes it run slower than the alternatives. However, they
are very cheap and relatively easy to set up. If you have a
Linux system, you should request my BOCA-FAQ, which outlines
the procedure for setting up a Boca 16-port board under Linux.
SMART CARDS: These cards take some of the processing load off
the main system. They are supported by the BSD systems, but
not Linux; as a result I have limited knowledge of them.
TERMINAL SERVERS: These are high-end products that are mercilessly
expensive, often over $ 2,000. In return, you get a device that
handles your terminal ports by effectively telnetting to your
system. This is significantly easier on your system, since it
no longer needs to process any form of terminal interrupts. This
is, however, yet another item I could use some help on, since
I've never used one of these beasts - too much money!
Karl Denninger
Annex:
Unix-style kernel. Well-known, venerable, highly stable.
Decent performance, but you will NOT be able to drive all the Annex
ports to full speed at once. I've tried it.
Livingston:
Newer, good reputation, but has a few problems that I can't live
with (primarily no host route advertisement). They claim to be
fixing this. RADIUS authentication system is quite nice. Not a
bad box.
Telebit:
Venerable, well-understood, *extremely* flexible command set and
capabilities. Can handle leased connections as well (up to T1 with
appropriate cards) which makes it a "POP in a box" possibility.
Classics are available cheaply, current units (NB40s, etc) are more
expensive. Will route IPX and Appletalk in addition to IP.
Basically it's a question of what you want and need.
To start, it pretty much depends on your budget. I currently have
four: three incoming lines plus my SLIP connection. Because my system
is experimental, nobody calls it yet and so I have no hard answer to
this question. (After a few months of running software that works
reasonably well (not fully debugged by any means), my lines are now
often full). My estimate is that you want 8-10 lines to start,
once you're ready to give your system a bit of publicity. But it
really all depends on your market and how high a profile you can
maintain.
Since I've written this, I've started getting occasional busy
signals on my three-line system. I have about 100 user accounts
and 10 people who call several times a day. Since I don't charge
for the system yet, however, most of these numbers are meaningless.
Stay tuned.
As a general rule, 10 users per line is suggested for conventional
dial-up connections. I believe Karl Denninger maintains roughly
this same ratio, even with his SLIP connections; he can do this due
to a 20-minute idle timeout for the SLIP.
Alicia Salomon
If you have under 16 lines on you system, you may wind up having to
buy a line for every 6-8 users.
Permanent SLIP connections by definition take precisely one dial-up
line per user, and should be priced accordingly. Some people have
gone to 4-6 users per line even for non-permanent SLIP.
George Herbert
"'Good' services will have a ratio of 10 to 12 users per modem. At
this level, you generally will not see busy signals except for brief
periods of time during peak hours (which are usually 5pm-midnight
local time). Users seem not to mind at all if they get a busy signal
for a couple of minutes every few days, so it seems to be OK.
"At a ratio around 15 to 1, you see people talking about longer
periods of busies (10+ minutes) regularly every night, and you start
to get complaints.
"At 18:1, your users start defecting en masse as they can't get on for
hours on end ... the worst possible example was 20:1, briefly, for a
major service who I won't name, which led to the other major services
in town picking up several hundred defecting customers and loads of
public postings of displeasure."
Steve Balbach
v.34 chip shortages industry wide put new modem orders on hold
Bell runs into facility problems at your location.
Bell messes up your order and takes weeks to straighten it out.
Electrical upgrades required
Wiring upgrades
UPS/power backup upgrades
I'm sure there's a slew of other possible problems that can arise. If
you're at 12:1 now and decide to put new modems in, you're too late -
expect possibly a few months of busy signals. And add more lines than
you need , proactive is the key."
I suspect this is especially good advice for a large ISP that runs
sizable numbers of lines and has to order modems in bulk. I've
certainly never had any trouble getting my modems from Fry's
electronics or some similar vendor. However, I once had a major
crisis when the phone company ran out of lines to put in my home; it's
taking about two months to straighten that out (through my upcoming
move to a commercial location).
However, if you use certain items of popular hardware like US Robotics
Total Control modem racks, you have to contend with the potential for
major shortages.
*.# What about Residential phone lines versus business?
Residential phone lines are generally much cheaper than business
lines. Traditionally, the phone company has subsidized the cost of
residence lines by charging businesses substantially more for phone
service. Fortunately, the network provider has almost exclusively
incoming calls, so the measured service issue for business lines
doesn't come up much.
In some areas, the base rates for business lines are about double
residence rates. In other areas, they are about the same. In most
places, all calls are measured, so you should watch out when calling
from any business lines.
Whether you use residence lines or not obviously depends at least in
part on the location of your business; you cannot use residential
lines if you're in a business location such as an office building or
store. Phone company policies on use of residence lines for a
business operating out of people's homes vary dramatically depending
on the area in which you live. The worst case is that you could be
back-billed for business rates from the inception of your business.
Best case, of course, is that the phone company could ignore you
completely and allow you the residence lines without trouble.
Fortunately for the budding ISP, phone companies in many cities are
setting up telecommuting programmes and in general trying to
encourage people to work at home. One of the major elements of this
appears to be allowing home businesses to "get away" with the use of
residence lines. Because of this, the pressure to get business lines
seems to have abated in many areas. For example, a few years back,
Pacific Bell tried to institute a crackdown against people who were
using residential lines for their BBSs. However they have recently
reversed this policy; now, they are more than happy to take orders
for multi-line BBSs at residential rates; my rep knew exactly what I
was doing when I placed the order, and even offered a few words of
encouragement. When I asked if there might be trouble in the future,
my rep - who seemed like quite a knowledgeable fellow - said no.
According to Alan Byrant's book on running a successful BBS,
Southwestern Bell has been particulary aggressive at nabbing
providers and BBSs who try running business systems off residential
lines. (I read this in the bookstore and unfortunately don't remember
the name of the book).
Unfortunately, there is a serious snag that I came across only when I
ordered a new 56k connection from Pacific Bell. In Pac Bell
territory, if you go over six lines, you are considered responsible
for any wiring costs to get additional lines out to your house. So in
order to get a seventh line, I would have to pay the $ 9,000 charge to
get additional lines wired in from the central office. For a single
seventh line, the charge might be lower, but since I needed a large
number of lines (about six more then), there was no really
cost-effective solution other than going to a business location.
Unfortunately, the phone company is less than forthcoming when asked
about the number of lines that can be put into a house or apartment.
As a general rule, they will actually attempt to do the installation,
find out they don't have enough lines available, and then you're
stuck.
One possible option is called a "Mux" or "Channel Bank". The phone
company gives you a T1 line between you and the central office; it can
hold up to 24 voice connections. You can then use the channel bank to
split the T1 into the 24 lines at your location. The problem with
this solution is that the channel bank itself costs about $ 4,000, and
it will only give you 24 lines per two that you presently have. So if
you can have a maximum of six lines, and two are in use already as
voice lines, your channel bank could give you 24 lines, and your other
two lines would be used by your Internet connection (56k or T1). So
your maximum growth at that site would be 24 lines.
According to Joe McGuckin
(Note that you probably wouldn't want to put those final two voice lines in
the channel bank, because they're residential voice lines, not
business lines; you want them to be free of toll charges).
Pacific Bell does NOT charge extra for this arrangement; other phone
companies do. When you're thinking of going this route, make sure you
know ALL possible phone company charges; otherwise, they might bite
you in unexpected places!
Most beginning ISPs start in their owner's home. This is nothing to
be ashamed of; even mighty Netcom started this way. Of course I'm
just a shade biased here; my nascent provider is right here at home,
too.
The home address has some very interesting advantages:
(1) It doesn't cost any more than what you're already paying for rent
or mortgage.
(2) You can use residential phone lines instead of business; rates are
50% or less business costs. However, see above for a full
discussion of the issues behind this.
(3) It's easy to get to in case of an emergency. Just walk to your
desk.
It also has some disadvantages you might not be aware of:
(1) It's probably technically illegal, thanks to zoning rules. Fortunately,
these are being gradually loosened.
(2) The tax consequences of deducting the portion of your mortgage used
for business purposes are extraordinarily murky - and whether you
rent or buy your home, office in home deductions are a major red
flag for IRS audits.
(3) It has a few image problems. You don't normally want to escort
potential customers for big accounts into your living room and
have them run into that strange mess the kids created during
playtime. Potential employees may also be less than impressed
by your working environment.
(4) Some telco services may not be available to residential customers.
This is one issue I don't know much about - I'd appreciate more
information from people who know what they're talking about here.
(5) You may be able to bring in only a very limited number of lines;
see the previous section.
In the end, though, it all boils down to money. If you have tons of
the stuff, you'll probably have an office. If money's tight, running
your ISP out of your home is one of the best ways to save.
There has been an interesting recent thread on the inet-access mailing
list about what location is least prone to natural disasters and other
mishaps. These could range from a mighty earthquake to a raging
fire.
The ideal solution would seem to be a building you own yourself that's
not shared with any other tenants. The non-shared aspect would mean
that you wouldn't be vunerable to man-made disasters caused by them;
the building would probably be only a single story and thus less
vunerable to earthquakes. Ideally, the building should be separated
from others (like a single family house as opposed to a building in a
bunch of cheek-by-jowl commercial buildings).
After the recent Oklahoma bombing, it's pretty clear that you don't
want to share your building with government offices.
Unfortunately, few of us can afford such a costly solution, unless we
ran the business out of our homes.
People who run an ISP out of their homes may find problems installing
T1 lines (which may not be cost effective to the phone company) and
installing large numbers of phone lines. Most commercial buildings
have no set limit to the number of lines that can be installed,
although it's always a good idea to ask the phone company before you
finally select your building.
There would appear to be an enormous variance in the number of phone
lines you can install in a residential building, ranging from 3 to
300. The upshot is that good relations with the phone company are
essential - however much you may swear at them behind their back.
Don't forget the newsgroups misc.forsale.computers.workstation and
the corresponding pc-clone groups for the best prices on hardware.
Unfortunately, much of what's offered is rather low end and not
really suitable for an ISP. I did get my Sun 3/60 through the
workstation group, but it's not going to power a full provider; I
use my Linux PC for that and use the Sun for its neat 19" colour
monitor.
More recently, some very interesting hardware (SS10s) has been
offered with some regularity on the workstation group, so watch for
them and pounce if you want a SS10.
If you're looking for PC-style hardware to run your provider,
Computer Shopper is one of the best sources of deals.
For Sun workstations, an excellent place to start is by dropping a
line to Craig.Warner@ceram.com. He's a Sun clone dealer, and my
experience with him was excellent, even though I didn't wind up buying
anything (yet!). For real Suns, you'll have to find a local reseller.
The one I talked to could not relate to my needs, but hopefully you'll
have better luck.
Henry Minsky (hqm@ai.mit.edu) is developing a list of dealers who
carry used equipment. Access it through a Web browser via the URL
http://www.ai.mit.edu/datawave/hardware.html. "There are some
pieces of equipment I would not recommend getting used, but
others, such as the tape drive, have warranties from the reseller,
and seem to be a good option."
David K Merriman
Personal Computing Tools | Data acquisition, good source for
90 Industrial Park Road | Digiboard multi-port cards
Hingham, MA 02043
(800) 767-6728; fax (617) 740-2728; BBS (617) 740-0061
Data Comm Warehouse | Network cards, hubs, routers, patch panels,
1720 Oak Street | RAS hardware, modems, cable, connectors, LAN
P O Box 301 | software, LAN test equipment, cabling tools,
Lakewood, NJ 08701-9885 | UPSs, patch panels, rackmount, etc
(800) 328-2261; FAX (908) 363-4823
Comment: "Have dealt with them, and they are very good on delivery and
support. First catalog I turn to for network stuff."
Next section: Hooking up to the Internet
6.4 Silicon Graphics (SGI) Workstations
6.5 PCs running BSDI Unix
6.6 PCs running Linux
6.7 PCs running FreeBSD
6.8 PCs running BSD derivatives other than BSDI
6.9 PCs running SCO (Santa Cruz Operation) Unix
6.10 Other Unix Systems
6.11 Macintoshes running special MacOS Software
6.12 Macintoshes running BBS software.
6.13 Microsoft Windows Software
6.14 What about Microsoft Windows NT?
6.15 What about Microsoft Windows 95?
6.16 What about IBM's OS/2?
6.17 What about disk space, networking and memory requirements?
6.18 I want a Sun, but I'm confused. What would be a good sample configuration?
6.19 Relative Capabilities of various Sun models
6.20 What sort of monitor should I get with my Sun?
6.21 Care and feeding of disk drives
6.22 All About the Sun Netra
6.23 Tony Sanders' Recommended Equipment List
6.24 Other sources of information on PC hardware
6.25 What equipment is needed to hook up my system to the Internet?
6.26 What other equipment do I need?
6.27 How many phone lines do I need?
6.28 Where do I put all this stuff?
6.29 Choosing your location: Disaster planning and Phone Line Questions
6.30 This is so expensive! Where can I find this stuff cheap? (*)