I would like to thank the following people, whose efforts were particulary informative, helpful or encouraging:
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
Alicia Salomon
Bryant Durrell
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
This FAQ is copyright (C) 1994/1995 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
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.
Next section: Introduction