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I WISH TO BE AN INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER, HAVING MY OWN SET UP WAHT SYSTEM I NEED ?
THANKS

FIRASAT ALI

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isp

In reply to isp

There’s a lot of ground to cover in your question, but as a start, you’ll want a reliable T1/3 pipe from someone who has a POP on the Internet backbone or can get you there, a router, a server cluster with fail-over capability, and a means for your clients to connect. For reliablity you’ll want as much as possible to have hot-swap capability in everything, all protected by a good UPS and backed by many spares. An Internet Server package like Apache, Sambar, or IIS will be needed, along with SMTP and POP3 mail servers. You’ll also need a block of IP addresses for your exclusive use; one for each client if you plan to use dedicated addressing, or one for each physical connection to your site if you use DHCP.

As for connecting clients, you’ll need a slew of modems and adequate telephone service to support them, or some other type of access arrangement. My ISP is using wireless access via access points located on towers and roofs around the town – much better than the service the phone company provides! And having watched this ISP grow from 6 to 100+ users in the last few months, you’d better plan on getting by with very little sleep! Sounds like a fun adventure – go for it, and Good luck!

isp

In reply to isp

The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

isp

In reply to isp

It depends on what services you want to offer. If all you want to offer is dialup Internet connections, you’ll just need a bank of modems (or something like a Cisco AS5300 Access Server), an authentication server (e.g. CiscoSecure, Radius, etc.) and your own pipe to the Internet (T-1, T-3 or whatever makes sense in view of your projected volume.

If you also want to offer Web hosting, then you’ll need the additional servers running IIS (boo-hiss) or Apache on Linux (hoorah-hoorah).

For either, you’ll also need to provide for accounting, technical support, sales and management.

paul

isp

In reply to isp

The question was auto-closed by TechRepublic

isp

In reply to isp

Actually… most smaller ISPs don’t touch a modem… they resell the dialup services of a company like UUNet, Level3 or one of the many other companies like them.

(remember, that you can’t just get a bunch of phone lines and modems and call yourself an ISP, becuase your customers will never get greater then a 33.6-40.8kbps connection! 56k doesn’t work when there is more then one analog conversion (ie, you convert from analog->digital from your phone to the company, then back from digital->analog when it arrives at your customer, this will mean no 56k. An ISP uses digital modems that get to phone company via digital lines (ISDN, T1, T3, etc)).

These companies provide the physical numbers that a customer dials into, and they just route all that data via a T1 or T3 (or greater) into your facility where you will then provide the users with internet access (and other services) via the connections at your facility (ie, you’ll have one T1 to carry the traffic from users, and another T1 to carry in the internet, then you have a piece of hardware (router) that will give internet access from one T1 over to the people waiting on the other one.

Basically, if you have to ask “what do I need” then you don’t have enough experience yet. Your best bet if you really are interested, is to get a job at an independant ISP and study their operation, or failing that, get a very thick book =)

isp

In reply to isp

There’s also a pretty good HOWTO at linuxdoc.org on how to be a “pocket ISP”. It uses Red Hat Linux, but at the very least, should give you a good idea on what you need to do and have.

isp

In reply to isp

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