Luser ISPs

I wrote the following sometime during 1995. The ISP industry was relatively small in the UK at the time, but more and more people were trying to get onto the ISP bandwagon; they saw it as a way to print money. This was never really the case in the ISP industry, where most profit has to be plowed back into keeping systems upto date and getting new staff, along with keeping current staff. The following was written after I had helped a luser ISP in setting up their news server. Whilst just running an ISP isn't a license to print money, providing consultancy to people trying to set up systems on the Internet (be they normal companies or luser-ISPs) quite often is.

I did a bit of work for another ISP today that has really shown me a problem with the increase in Internet usage. The problem today was people jumping on the "lets be an Internet Provider and make lots of money" bandwagon without actually thinking about what they are letting themselves in for.

It seems that a lot of computer places are thinking of setting themselves up as Internet providers. They think that they can get a feed from one of the top level providers in the UK, chuck some servers together, grab some modems, get some customers and start hauling the money in.

Unfortunately, they don't quite realise that some technical know-how is required to setup the various servers required for Internet access. They also don't realise that customers will demand a 110% reliable service for £10 a month... and that customer support can be a real pain in the neck (as other admins from ISPs and I have proved with our posts :), taking up a lot of time, especially if you're a small ISP.

Well, the ISP I did some work for today was one of these. They seem to be a computer shop (I say "seem" as I'm going from what I overheard in the background of the phone calls I had with them) who have decided that an ISP would be really useful in their area. Now, they maybe able to build PCs, but this doesn't mean that they can configure the OS on them as well.

This ISP had got a basic service running, ie web and DNS servers were going (although they don't have their reverse DNS working, but that's another matter). But they didn't do this. They had another company configure the Linux machines to do what they needed!

I don't think that they know much about Unix at all, which really worries me a bit. They are trying to provide a service and they don't know how to run the OS on the servers they are using [shudder].

Anyway, they'd got a basic service running, but they hadn't managed to get their newsfeed going. This is a little bit of a problem as customers tend to like UseNet access :) So they had customers screaming for access to a news server, and an inability to configure the news system they had on the Linux machine (they were trying to use CNews). This is were I came in :)

I ended up installing INN on the news machine, getting the newsfeed going and tested, etc, etc. I also had to tell them that it wasn't a good idea to have their news/web and the dns/mail servers as demonstration machines either. By demonstration, I mean that people could walk into the computer shop and pay to use the servers for Internet access. They were a little surprised that they couldn't get away with 16Mb of memory in a machine running a full newsfeed (even without the newsfeed the news machine had all of 288k of real memory left. Thrashing ? Never heard of that before :). This was without any luser paying to access the web and thus running netscape on the servers as well.

Its a little worrying really, as when I was looking at their machines for to see how long the job would take, they gave me the root password when I asked for an account on the news machine. Security ? Whats that ? Whilst I was installing the news system, I also found problems with the DNS, timezone, mail server...

The question is, how long are these outfits going to last ? I don't really mind them, as we get money for doing the work. However, if they give a bad service, it reflects on the rest of the UK ISPs to a certain extent as well.

The real problem was that I had to drop the work I was doing on our systems to get their systems running. [Sigh] I see another load of 100+ hour weeks looming :( Oh, and don't even ask about the cloud of dumb user questions that I see on the horizon getting ever-so-ever closer to me. Its fairly overcast with them already, but it looks like a real storm is on its way.

I see requests all the time in various newsgroups from wanna-be ISPs. I give them a pointer to a FAQ and hope it discourages them, or at least makes them aware of some of the issues.