How To Start An ISP (like it's 1993)

Ever wonder how a dial-up ISP from the 90s actually worked?
We did, so to find out, we decided to start our very own dial-up ISP... like it's 1993! Come along as we hear from Pete Ashdown, the founder of XMission, one of the earliest commercial ISPs in the United States that's still going strong today. We also find out what hardware we'll need, but will our journey end before it even gets started?
Want more content like this? Support our channel! Send us a Thanks and check out our Patreon + Discord community: / serialport
#90s #internet #technology
00:00 - Connection established
01:11 - The Internet then and now
02:30 - Pete Ashdown
05:07 - ISP equipment
06:15 - The XMission infrastructure
09:42 - PPP
11:14 - ISPs in the 90s
12:25 - ISP FAQ
13:40 - The first step
14:20 - The network is the computer
15:43 - First power on
16:15 - Outro & Credits
Thanks to Foudroie (lofigirl.com/releases/foudroie/) for the track 'Journey'!
References:
Ashdown, Pete. Video Interview. Conducted by Serial Port, July 2023.
Terry, QuHarrison. By 2069, Every Person On Earth Will Have Internet Access. Medium, 2019.
The Internet. Computer Chronicles, 1993.
Gilster, Paul. The Internet Navigator. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1993.
Lambert, S. & Howe, H. Internet Basics. Random House, 1993.
Gibbs, M. & Smith, R. Navigating The Internet. Sams Publishing, 1993.
The ARPANET Project. J. Willard Marriott Library Digital Scholarship Lab at University of Utah, 2023.
Goodrich, Joanna. How the Computer Graphics Industry Got Started at the University of Utah. IEEE Spectrum, 2023.
Dennis, David H. The Inet-Access Frequently Asked Questions, 1997. web.archive.org/web/199704110...

[@CoyoteSeven]

The first commercial ISP I signed up on was called Kaiwan in 1994. I remember they were set up inside a house which I guess belonged to the family that ran it. The house was jam packed with hardware. I'd sometimes go there to pay my bill directly. It's long gone now.

[@t58beare]

That's wild to think about now.

[@yasyasmarangoz3577]

​@@t58beareyep

[@AdamsOlympia]

Lol, sounds very familiar. One of the first dialup ISPs I used after starting out on Compuserv and AOL, was also run out of a house, just a few blocks away from me, called esper net. My father and I signed up for our account at his house, where his entire basement was a maze of server racks taller than me. We only had the account until 98 or so, when we signed up for a PeoplePC internet contract that came with a “free” 380mhz desktop PC.

[@AdamsOlympia]

Looks like esper is still running IRC servers, among other services. I can’t imagine he would have recouped his investment costs though, considering there were big corporate ISPs available in Knoxville at the time and it wasn’t too long before DSL and cable internet starting taking over.

[@lilia_spn]

Holy shit man i would love to do that. Having a Barbecue over at your ISP's house, imagine lol

[@Nabeelco]

I really wish I didn't have to wait 19 hours to watch this. 😂

[@DiyintheGhetto]

Same here.

[@The-i-Shakk]

Welcome to the future.

[@apricotcomputers3943]

Haha 1996 y'all!!!

[@TravisFabel]

So you're joking, however having lived in this time... First you would be amazed to see any kind of video playing. Never mind video and audio. We didn't have the compression algorithms we have today, So this would be minimally compressed video... What you would consider to be close to raw today. So 19 hours? No. First you expand the volume of this video by a factor of 10 or more because of the lack of compression. And then you have to be more realistic about the speed. You're talking a month of download non-stop for this one video however you don't have enough hard drive space to store it locally. That's anywhere from 10-15mins to over an hour per megabyte... And it's going to be more megabytes than this video because compression wasn't invented yet.

[@st20332]

​@TravisFabel you wrote all that as a response to a joke?

[@KrisRyanStallard]

I worked at a dialup ISP in the late 90's in rural Oklahoma. I did customer service and tech support. I absolutely loved it.

[@KrisRyanStallard]

We operated out of a storage building the owner converted into an office. It was ity bitty. Part of my job was to stuff billing invoices into envelopes, and enter checks and in office payments into our custom account management software. People would actually come into the office to sign up if they were nearby.

[@tripleconsonant]

wow!!! i'd bet your employer serviced my family!

[@donixion4368]

I ran a BBS in 1990 when I was 17 and I remember this time very well. A couple of sysops from my local area got together in 1994 to form our first ISP. This was one of the most exciting times in computer communications and I miss it.

[@unseenentity326]

I ran a BBS around that time as well. In the Apple world, there was GBBS and METAL/FutureVision. Each had their own networking software which allows posts and emails to propagate from the origin BBS to all the other BBS's in the network. This was done by a BBS calling another BBS to send and receive data. Each BBS was assigned what BBS to exchange data with and when to do it. Eventually, all BBS's were synchronized. But the GBBS network couldn't talk to the FutureNet network. So a group of us from both got together and met up at the home of Appleholics Anonomous BBS's SysOp. We spent a day or two writing code that would allow the two networks to talk to each other. Those were the glory days. Just for the heck of it, my BBS was called The BoycoT BBS. Others I remember were Game Central, Mike & Matts Tavern, The Captain's Quarters, The Bum's Palace, Corrosion of Conformity, Ash Stone BBS, Damage Incorporated, Slipstream BBS, Crosspoint Matrix, Lost Gonzo, Virtual Reality, Remote A.E. BBS, Lightning Strikes Here, The Byte Bastards, and Manzana. Here's a couple of links if anyone is interested: tolsen64.com:8080/BoycoTBBS/index.htm, tolsen64.com:8080/BoycoTBBS/bbs_sigs.htm

[@tomr6955]

I often think I was born much too late. I would have loved being 18 in the late 80s early 90s

[@tradde11]

I ran a BBS in the early to mid 90s. It was much fun, and miss those days. I considered starting an ISP later. I was in my 30s though. But it was fun adding features to my BBS and keeping it current and fast. Even got a story in the local newspaper. I miss those days.

[@Thiesi]

Operating my own ISP was my dream back in the 90s - one that I never made come true. So I can't wait for further episodes of this series to drop!

[@johnclement5903]

Judging from your avatar, you owned an Amiga back in the day. I still hate myself for ditching my beloved A500 in the early aughts.

[@OCTAGRAM]

You can join DN42 project. You will have to configure BGP and other protocols, just like real ISP

[@Thiesi]

@@OCTAGRAM That sounds like a pretty cool idea. I already operate two Tor nodes, but Tor is a breeze to set up compared to any BGP stuff, IMHO. I do sysadmin work for a living, but we have a dedicated networking team so I've never had to deal with BGP before. That's what kept me from participating in DN42 in the past though I really like the idea behind it. I will definitely look into it. Thanks for the heads-up!

[@Thiesi]

@@johnclement5903 Not just one - over the years, I've owned an A500 (I think I got a second A500 as a replacement for my first one when that one broke, but I'm not sure), an A1000, an A3000 (that one used to be my "daily driver" for quite some time, and it was outfitted with a bsc MultiFace III serial board for faster serial port operations without hogging the CPU, a Discovery 2400CM and a ZyXEL 19.2k modem, and three SCSI harddisks), an A1200 in an _infinitiv_ tower (that one I still own although I haven't powered it up in 18 years, and I think the power supply fuse is gone), and a CD32 which I even had an SX32 for. Thanks to the latter, my CD32 sported more RAM, a floppy drive, a mouse and keyboard, and a harddisk. The weird thing is I have absolutely no recollection of what happened to all these things - except for the A1200 which is still sitting in my cellar to this day. I probably gave the other stuff away for free when I moved at some point, but as I said - I truly don't remember doing so. Ah well, we all get older...

[@tradde11]

That was mine too. I had been running a BBS for some time and considered starting an ISP. But after looking into how much hardware I would need and having to resolve issues at any time day/night I decided to forgo this. But it was fun to consider doing it. And I even had my spouses approval too. :)

[@BeardedGeezer]

I would like to call your attention to a company that was involved in the early Internet in the 90s. That company is eSoft. They had a BBS product (TBBS), which they initially augmented with an Internet box called the IPAD, or Internet Protocol Adaptor. Eventually, the IPAD became a stand-alone product that contained servers for most of the services needed for an ISP, such as HTTP, POP3, SMTP, mailing lists, DNS, FTP, and so on. I would direct you to the Wikipedia entry for eSoft, or the Web site for the IPAD Owners Association, which still exists. I have manuals for the IPAD 5000 and 2500 models, as well as an IPAD-OS Technical Guide that I would gladly donate to your group.

[@theserialport]

Thank you! It sounds similar to Galacticomm with MajorBBS? Please contact us, info at serialport dot org

[@Mario_27742]

Thank you for this info

[@bricefleckenstein9666]

@@theserialport Not real similar. Major BBS also could deal with multi-port - but needed a lot higher end hardware to support fewer ports. TBBS could run 64 ports (stock) on a higher-end 80386 or low-end 80486 - and in a custom configuration for Event Horizons, ran 96. ONE MACHINE. Major also needed expen$ive "smart" Digiboards or similar to manage the ports it COULD handle. TBBS did it was much lower cost "dumb" Digiboards. 100% assembly language code made TBBS far more efficient.

[@itstheterranaut]

I used to admin this kind of thing for an ISP called 'Demon'- fairly big and well remembered here in the UK. As things progressed we moved to something post dial-up, when xDSL had become the desired tail of choice. At that point things had become slightly more standardised, for scalability purposes our bearers were generally ATM; for security we endeavoured to hold inbound connections at layer 2 until authentication had passed, and then you'd get your IP address. Cisco had created a sort of reference design for this which broke the stages into "BAS" and "LNS", which was of course an excuse for Cisco to Sell More Cisco :) but some of the background infrastructure was as basic as you describe here. A small team, and we had enormous fun. As an admin, I got to do everything, from sorting out issues for domestic and Mom and Pop sized customers, all the way to big multihomed BGP implementations. It never leaves you. AS2529, I remember and miss you and hope you remember me fondly. CTRL-Z

[@moonshinepz]

I remember Demon very well. I had Demon internet for my business. They were brilliant. Maybe we talked on the phone📞 Never imagined how the internet would change between now and then, or how fast it changed in those early years. They were exciting times.

[@RachaelSA]

I spent the 90s building LAN's, WAN's, Internet Cafe's and ISPs. By the mid to late 90's I was using Linux for pretty much all of it. I still work for ISP's, so seeing all this is very nostalgic for me.

[@ducksauz]

I lived through all this, from ftp and gopher on shells at uni, to discovering SLIP on the uni term servers right after I graduated in 93 around the same time Mosiac came out. This is some fantastic storytelling of the early days. Can't wait to see more!

[@Lupinicus1664]

A work colleague and I were very close to starting an ISP in the early 90s. We acquired a large server, running Linux of course and were testing modems etc. Then we both landed (very) lucrative contracts and shelved the idea. Big kudos to those that followed through with it. Sometimes I think it could have been a missed opportunity but that was a hard business to get traction in and marketing to get those subscribers on board was critical. Cost of entry was low(-ish) in the beginning so competition was fierce.

[@nickwallette6201]

And fairly thankless, as things moved so fast. I bet it was a constant slog to install enough modems, just in time to rip them out and replace all the 9600s with 14.4k, and then again with 28.8k, and 33.6 and 56k, err, no, the _other_ 56k. And then become completely obsolete as the phone and cable companies decimated all the dialup business with DSL and cable modems.

[@thardie]

Thank you SO much for putting this together. This is so nostalgic. I was doing basically all of this in New Zealand in the early nineties. We supported SLiP, PPP, UUCP for the longest time. I was employee #3 at ICONZ (Internet Company of New Zealand). We used Cisco 2501 and 2511s for our terminal servers. We started with a 64k leased line to the University of Auckland. I remember writing hacks for the SUNOS 4.1.3 binaries of telnet, ftp, gopher, etc so we could track bytes send and received, so we could bill our customers per kB of data transferred.

[@KiwiHelpgeek]

I remember my days at ICONZ fondly, although I started much later than you did, namely mid 90's. I still laugh when remembering that time the moaning sound came from the Sparc box and playing Doom after work hours over the network. I also remember having to watch that generator during the infamous rolling blackouts. Hard to believe that was nearly 30 years ago. I feel so old!

[@jroysdon]

Fun project. I was part of running an ISP for businesses (no home users) that only resold nailed-up ISDN (2x64KB "B" channels for always-on 128KB) and T1s to local businesses. One concern I'd have about using old gear like that is how vulnerable that non-supported equipment is with "forever-day" security exploits. Be very careful what you connect, and I'd recommend having a real firewall between all of your services and only whitelisting specific IPs to have access inbound to services. Fun fact: We still use Cisco 2500 a stack of 8 "Access Servers" to run the power grid, coupled with two shelves of 32-modems each (64 total modems) and toggle switches to switch between the Cisco 2500s. All of those Cisco 2500s have uptimes of over 12 years (last time we could upgrade their DRAM and IOS).

[@spazda_mx5]

Facinating stuff! I'm old enough to remember dial-up in the late 90's so it'll be great to see what was behind the scenes!

[@anumeon]

Ahh,, the sounds of my childhood.. That modem dialing sound is engrained in my soul, mind and heart from the good days of yore

[@concorde2003]

Good work. I ran an ISP in Central IL 1995-2000. When I sold it in 2000, we had about 5500 dial-up customers, about 15 dial-up POPS in little tows, a bunch of dedicated 64k/128k ISDN Centrex customers, and a handful of dedicated circuits (56k, fractional T1). I sold it because Ameritech was about to offer DSL. I figured my window of opportunity was about to slam shut. Someone who disagreed bought my business and overpaid nicely for it. It was quite a rush...I lived in constant terror and couldn't really take any vacations. I remember that in about 1996, someone tried to have a convention for ISP's. Supposedly, virtually nobody showed because nobody could afford to get away.

[@itsicearmour]

Super dope video! I'm a contractor for one of North America's biggest colocation providers and we still have some support for old-ass systems from the early 2000s. Couple of months ago some dude reported having issues with a hub one of their legacy systems was connected to, which absolutely blew my mind considering hubs haven't been used since the late 90's at best.

[@lemagreengreen]

I was around and addicted to dial up internet in those early days! 1994 was the year I had my first true ISP that gave me full internet access and what a time that was, will be great to see the rest of this series

[@Z4NL]

That was so much fun to watch, good memories. I did the exact same thing and started a local ISP in 1994. There were only 3 other ISP's in the Netherlands at the time. Our first "server" was a Silicon Graphics Indy R4600 workstation with a 16 serial port unit connected to the SCSI port. It handled all email, DNS, websites and even our Usenet node. I still have this machine in storage with its original monitor, keyboard, mouse and camera! We used a stack of Supra 28K8 modems in the early days. We gave demonstrations of the wonders of the internet in a local shopping mall and subscriptions were pouring in. Wonderful times. Looking forward to the next episode!

[@georgegrubbs2966]

I remember Evans and Sutherland, especially Ivan Sutherland. Amazing story, so well-presented. Love your videos! Keep them coming.

[@phazonclash]

Those were the days... Great memories! My first machine to ever be connected to the internet was a 486-DX33, with a 14.4kbps modem. No native TCP/IP support on Windows 3.1 as far as I remember (correct me if I'm wrong), so I had to use a piece of software called "Trumpet Winsock" to connect to my provider! The 90s were crazy, everything was evolving so fast. One night, I decided to download the Diablo 1 shareware (It was like ~50-55MB)... It took many hours, so I would wake up every hour or so to check if the download was still going. When I finally got a cable connection (150kbps down / 50kbps up) in the late 90s, it was simply incredible! Being connected to the internet all the time, with these crazy speeds! Holy shit, that was like living in the future 😂

[@streetsafari0]

Built an ISP in London in 94-5. Cisco 2501+Livingston Portmaster 2 (i think)+Sun clone (axil 320). Fairly straight forward.

[@TomStorey96]

I always felt like I came along about 10 years too late and missed out on the early days of dialup ISPs, so I've always just had to make do with running my own little ISP at home just for me. I think the best time I had was in the mid 2000s when I moved into a flat a couple of doors away from a friend. We setup a wireless link between each other, and with a Cisco router on either end we peered with each other using BGP just like the big boys. But we also each had a modem hanging off our phone lines (using ADSL broadband for internet connectivity so the phone line was generally free) and could tether our laptops to our mobile phones and dial into home before wifi, mobile broadband and VPNs were really a thing. I think we might have even had a LAC/LNS type arrangement going on so that we could dial into each others modems and based on the authentication domain we would be forwarded to our own home networks over the wireless link. This was all while I was working on the support desk at a local ISP, and perhaps needless to say I was able to transfer over to the engineering side within a couple of months which was pretty awesome. 😄 These days rather than running networks I prefer the more hands on work of building networks and have gotten to install and commission some of the biggest iron that money can buy (think Juniper MX2020s, Cisco ASR9900 etc), and also deploy DWDM optical networks that are the underpinning technology that makes all of this possible. Starting an ISP proper is probably still my #1 dream. Maybe some day. In more recent times, just for fun, I picked up a Cisco digital modem module to put in a more modern 3800 series router (it's all so cheap now), but modern OSes, apps and websites just aren't made with dialup in mind and it quickly grinds to a halt and is barely useable.

[@Mike-mu7tk]

Ran an ISP with a couple guys; 16 lines on a PortMaster 2e doing radius auth on a cheap sun workstation, and billing was done on a 486 reading the Portmaster logs. So many many many hours doing tech support for Winsock. This is giving me both positive and negative nostalgia. I can still picture clearly what the modem room looked like this room lights off, and the big day going from 28 to 56k

[@fokthewef]

👋👋 I was one of the people making it happen. I used to work for an ISP as a network engineer back in 1999. Used to configure Cisco routers for dialup on E1 interface card, Radius on Freebsd, Sendmail etc etc.. all running on a couple of T1 satellite services. did the daily customer help desk as well. What a time. I was 25 at the time. Fantastic video. Brings back memories and provides context to how the ISP in my tiny country started back in 1996. The actual one I worked for.

[@subalpine-fir]

Wishing you all the best. This is top tier content, can't wait to see your channel grow.

[@AlexanderRay92]

Getting into the internet in the early 2000s was interesting in that it was right at the waning end of the 90s internet, when dial-in services and protocols like IRC were still fairly common and you could still visit vestiges of that culture in some forums and still-existent BBS.

[@SCSNSE]

Just would like to say I really enjoyed the editing techniques and overall flow of the video. Not only is it quick and concise, but you strike a good balance of explaining context and addressing tangents when they come up like toward the end explaining the history of Sun. Really keeps it interesting and didn’t feel like 16 minutes. Going back and now watching some of your earlier vids like the resto project of that old IBM desktop got me hooked and subbing. Hope to see more great work!

[@combusean]

Good video. ISPs really had a thing for BSDi's BSD/OS as well back then. Sun hardware was always mindlessly expensive and BSD/OS filled the niche of a robust corporatey Unix workalike on x86 before Linux took that over. I'm surprised there's no mention of SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol) given the channel name.

[@Comeyd]

Re: SLIP @ 9:50

[@halo122398]

Yesssss more networking history. My fav. Please continue with vintage network engineering!

[@Waterbottles711]

Fantastic video. Thank you for this information and great job consolidating all this info and putting together this video.

[@kaitlyn__L]

It’s fascinating how his description of home use in 94 was such a different experience than that relayed by Cliff Stoll of the late-80s, when he could dial-into Berkeley’s VAX from home and get to the internet pretty hassle-free. Of course the hassle was done by the IT guys for getting the uni network onto the internet, but for all the students and faculty it was easy. I imagine by the early 90s the uni networks were a bit more closed-off, hence the need to formally arrange an ISP. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he did the older way for personal use from UofU and that’s what gave him the idea to resell the connection to others in a more codified way. Either way, Joe Bloggs isn’t going to arrange a timeshare account with his local college just for internet, and may not even be allowed to, so having a general purpose ISP is definitely useful.

[@teranokitty]

Cliff Stoll worked as a system admin at Berkeley at the time, so he was probably dialing in with his employee account.

[@rricci]

I need to re-read that book. The only partwas where he stick his sneakers in the microwave..

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@rricci oh my gosh YES. “Don’t do it!” “What if, uh, hypothetically…” “Doooon’t do it!!!”

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@teranokitty it gave him free time, but he also explicitly says all the students and staff at Berkeley had the same access (if they were willing to pay for it). That’s part of what made the hacker choose it as a gateway, using abandoned accounts from professors and students who hadn’t been there for years. And the hacker did it on plenty of other universities’ and companies’ networks too, over the course of the book.

[@tradde11]

There was no "Internet" in the 80s. The "Internet" as we know it today started (as it is now) in the mid 90s. Colleges had connections to other colleges and of course DARPA existed for the government.

[@dxlusi0nal]

I'm still amazed you only have 20k subs right now, your videos are absolutely fascinating and so well-made!

[@Masx99]

wow the memories. I ran a 4 line dial-up BBS in the early 90's using Wildcat, there were many 'large' 24 and 36 line BBS's in this area. Very interesting times. Loved the video, keep the great content coming!

[@tradde11]

Yes, those were the days of the BBS. I ran a 2 node system and was one of the best times of my past. So many BBS in my area and all of the sysops I talked to were really nice and friendly.

[@rolling_marbles]

I remember starting an ISP in the back of a video store in the late 90's in Southern Maryland. What an interesting time to be alive!

[@UpLateGeek]

It was interesting to see the perspective of someone who was actually in the thick of the Internet industry in the early 90s. I was in high school in the mid-90s; a family friend gave us his modem when he upgraded, told me about BBSes and showed me how to dial up to them. So being a curious teenager I racked up a huge phone bill for my parents dialling up to dozens of different BBSes a week. Then my high school got the Internet, and I was hooked. I smartly argued with my parents that they could "save money" buy getting the Internet, since I could just dial up to one provider for hours at a time instead of multiple BBSes a day, and eventually they agreed to give it a try. Next I argued that they wouldn't miss so many calls if we got a second phone line just for the Internet, and surprisingly they agreed. I always dreamed of starting my own ISP. After high school I studied IT and did a networking course. After researching everything needed to start the ISP, and working out how much it would cost, I pretty much gave up on the idea, since it might as well have been an infinite amount of money for a young person in their 20s. I just didn't have the brains for business. By the mid-2000s I was working for an IT company that ran a dial-up ISP, but that was well in decline by that stage. I think they wanted me to help run the ISP side, but my networking knowledge at that stage was little more than theoretical, I had no practical experience. My skills were much more on the IT side. I only really developed my networking skills when I got my next job, and that was with a television network. Once I developed my skills and managed to rescue enough old gear from the e-waste bin, I put together a home test lab. I was using it to figure out how to set up VoIP systems, and I realised I was only a few small steps away from being able to create a dial-up "ISP", so with a little work I could dial in through my VoIP PSTN simulator setup into the "ISP" and get online. Next I bought a few more parts and built an ISDN simulator, which eventually allowed me to build a full 56K digital dial-in setup. And it worked! That was a few years ago, now my lab is packed up in storage to make way for other hobbies. It was a fun exercise, but there's no more analogue phone lines or ISDN here in Australia, so is has no practical use outside of the lab.

[@livefreeprintguns]

I love this sort of historical deep dive, thanks for making!

[@usmcz]

Subbed for this. Anxiously awaiting the series.

[@tomthumb2057]

LOL built two ISP's one in the early 90's and the other in early 2000. Thank you for the trip down memory lane. For what it's worth it was really fun living in the early days of the Internet. Got my start with Darpnet/arpanet. Using it to interconnect my cluster of HP minicomputers and source free to use code and data. Well any way it was fun to watch :)

[@openBSDguru]

thanks for the nice trip into the past. back then (mid-80s) i ran a bbs myself and helped set up one of the first isp in my city. starting with a leastline and several unix boxes (yup mostly sun) and a bunch of modems.

[@steevf]

Wow I started with Xmission back in 93 and I'm still with Xmission.

[@rsutherland76]

Lots of memories. My mentor who helped me get started in IT was David Ray; he started Terrestrial Online in Scottsdale, Az. Many nights were spent keeping things running, and lots of great learning.

[@poofygoof]

my first (terminal only) ISP ran SCO before I left for college, I think it used directly-wired serial expanders into a single system. It ran Waffle BBS, but shell access was available. I was around for the ride from UUCP to 56k-frame to co-located fractional T1. in college I worked for a regional ISP that was based around (Tatung) SPARCs running SunOS (later UltraSPARCs with Solaris) and Telebit Netblazers, with roughly 1000 phone lines in the region connected by frame relay between sites, and multiple T1s (later T3s). The classics were good machines, but keep in mind that ssh was not contemporaneous, and SSL was still in its early days. It's possible to secure old hardware like this with modern OSes and software, but it will be an exercise in patience.

[@FintanMoloney]

This is a very interesting topic. Excellent content as always !

[@diario_e-bike]

This sound of trying the dial connection is amazing!! Midnight is time to connect the internet and chat with friends!!!

[@I4get42]

That was great! Thanks for y'all's awesome work. I don't know how you resisted pointing out those Serial Ports on the back of the Spark 😂

[@rricci]

Hearing the modems handshake brings s tear to my rye. Having s modem in the 80s and 90s, I learned to like...even love that dound. I moss the old BBS days.

[@l-l]

Awesome video. Excited to see where this project goes.

[@gdp3rd]

I still remember my first non-University ISP, run out of an apartment just a few blocks from our house. I used the account for non-work stuff, and my son started using it for school. Until we added a second phone line in our house we had to tell each other "don't use the phone, I'm online!"

[@vu2abs]

One of my first projects as a software engineer in my first job was to setup a dial in ISP in 1999 - 2000. We decided to use freebsd and setup the isp using 3 servers running Radius, Squid for cacheing and sendmail,(?) as mailserver. Mailserver stuff was done by my other team member.

[@ShainAndrews]

Been a hot minute since I've messed with T1's. Building cross connects in the DACS. Sending loop up commands to the CSU's and DCU's. The mastery of a T-Bird test set. Wiring cross connects in the CO, or POP.

[@michaeldemel4934]

I can remember getting internet access sometime between 95 and 97 though a university via dial-up. The reason we were able to connect, it was no longer long distance to the university. This was on a IBM 486 with windows 3.1, using Lynx via terminal. The first thing I remember downloading was the X-Files theme song, which took several hours on a 2400 baud modem. I was around 11 to 13 or so. A few years later we added a dedicated phone line for dial-up that allowed staying connected to the ISP 24/7, at that time I had 56k. A few years after that, I was also one of the few people in my town (around 2001) to have high speed internet (WISP 1Mb symmetrical). I thought it was unbelievable going from 56k to 1Mb. We also had DSL for a good while but we now have fiber to the home and get 200Mb plus. Its amazing how fast stuff changed in the 90's.

[@Leetfin]

Immediate sub and notification bell. Can't wait to see how this goes!

[@ChrisFredriksson]

IN NEXT VIDEO!?? come ooooooooon.. I want to see more now! 😋❤ Can't wait for next video, really awesome video so far! ❤

[@gwgux]

Wow, neat. I look forward to future videos on this!

[@Bitfreakie]

My first employer started off with a Sun Netra Internet Server in 1995, serving online software and databases, what we now call SaaS. The sound of that server booting, with a female voice saying “The Sun Netra Internet Server is now being configured”. After a while stating “The Sun Netra Internet Server is now configured”. We were connected to the Internet through a Cisco 2500 and a 64 kbps dedicated line. I loved those times, things evolved so quickly. Exciting times :-)

[@RyanLelek]

Very excited for this series!

[@timitheo]

Nice history and documentaiton of the challenges. We started The Little Garden in the SF Bay area in 1990 that really needs to be documented some time.

[@calw2939]

This is a really well presented video!

[@tlniec]

This takes me back to the halcyon days of the early/mid-90s and the transition from BBS's to services like Prodigy to true local ISPs. I was more into using these services than trying to run my own, though I did have a few friends that ran BBS's and fantasized about getting a T1 and setting up an ISP. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised I was able to figure out setting up my dial-up modem, a TCP/IP client, SLIP/PPP configuration, DNS/gateway, etc at that age and having (in retrospect) minimal computer science/networking knowledge!

[@davep2115]

I remember those days vividly. I worked the telecom side, with POTS, ISDN BRI and PRI, T1, and even the occasional DS3. I also worked the network side, installing and configuring routers. That 2500 series was everywhere.

[@dirkfromhein]

Props for showing a NeXTStation Turbo at 1:56 … granted it was a NeXT Cube that started the WWW… but still props! And what currently runs your iPhone is based on NeXTSTEP!! (BTW NeXTStation turbo’s introduction was 1992) Still by far my favorite hardware / software )

[@BjrnOttoVasbottenbjovas]

Remember going to my neighbour who had an internet account, waiting to 17:00 to dial up when it was cheaper, then going on IRC trolling it up. Amazing days

[@billwoodall562]

Just saw your episodes about ISP in the 90s. I am going to date myself, but I worked for an ISP, I setup and worked on the following gear, USR/3com Total Control Chassis (x2, V.90, ISDN. used both versions of O/S on the chassis), Ascend chassis (Flex56, v90, ISDN), and believe or not a Bay Networks chassis (it would do the trifecta, v.90, x2, Flex56, plus ISDN). If you have questions on quest, please ask.

[@FLUFFSQUEAKER]

This is content perfection. Can't wait for the next videos!

[@christopherrasmussen8546]

yup. I was in the service. I was posted to a military college as support. We had connectivity. ARPANET was just over and we had Thicknet. They gave me a suitcase with a DOS PC built in and a modem. My first DUN. I took it places and blew people's minds. Took it to my moms. She was in a business that had a mil connection so she knew and has used the 'net. I used my DUN at her place and she was fascinated. She exclaimed the long distance charges and I told her nope. She was a mainframe engineer

[@nickaugust1661]

this is an awesome video! good content keep it up cheers!

[@handlealreadytaken]

Right about when I graduated from high school in '96, a few classmates in town start an ISP. Really basic hardware at the time like commodity desktop computers but they eventually won a contract to have the ton lay fiber to every home and eventually sold it a Baby Bell that was under ATT.

[@viperjay1]

This is a awsome video. The project sounds like it's going to be a headach.

[@erbenton07]

I can't wait for the next installment. I was on BBS's back in the early 90's

[@r000tbeer]

A trip down memory lane. I don't know how many of those Adtran CSU/DSU and Cisco 2500 series combos I installed and configured in the late 90s. A few ran IPX across them instead of TCP/IP.

[@lookitsahorner]

I've been curious to see the TSU 100e in a video since I spotted it in one of the RaQ videos, glad to see it has made an appearence!

[@theserialport]

We've tested and it is working, so we'll show it off more in a future video!

[@ceefusjenkins2281]

Can't wait for the next episode!

[@TokyoChopSquad]

My parents met on an old BBS board in Cleveland while they were in high school. And now I'm here lol

[@singletona082]

Discussing the era middle-school me was in first staring at the librarian's home computer we as a class sat around as a literal field trip to surf the internet. Then ther'es that fun gem that was juno mail. God i miss that service. Yea it ended up overextending by trying t obecome a ful lblown ISP to try staying relevant and technically it's still around... and the baked in ads were annoying, but that was my first and honestly? I enjoyed it for what it was.

[@W1ldTangent]

Wow I forgot about Juno, that's a trip down memory lane

[@CrazyLogic]

That cliffhanger at the end is brutal.

[@jeff95050]

That was fun. Re-living my early days back in San Jose at the start of the 80's working in tech. Thanks for the flashback.

[@kevinmassey1164]

My first job in tech was 1994, employee number 19 at ClarkNet. Helping customers get connected with trumpet winsock. Good memories

[@pvtnewb]

My first experience with a "dial up" was in late 2000s, it was a CDMA mobile phone, that doubled as a dial up modem. I remembered feeling oddly excited for my first time on the internet.

[@MeiinUK]

So then it means that most net access these days are actually part of the application and software layers... And data manipulation etc....

[@mbe102]

new sub, but wow this is well put together! Really enjoying this stuff. I was around for this time, but, didn't really get much access too it (very poor)

[@dertbom]

I was wrongly denied my startup money back then. I had a 16 node Wildcat BBS system. I still plan to recreate the Lemonade Stand game from it.

[@thepoliticalstartrek]

I was a head engineer for an ISP in the mid 90s. We started out with Cisco 2500 Pro and HEX cables connected to 33.6 modems. We had Free BSD as a mail /webserver/ Things you can not do today is LATA jumping. We server 50 different LATAs. Now with digital POS you can not LATA Jump. The way the old phone system worked is when you forwarded to another number it released the original number. So I had us setup with up to 10 LATA jumps. Later on we went to Cisco 7200R and 3Com Total control units.

[@briceperdue7587]

Big fan thanks for this!

[@craigjackson1290]

I think this is awesome , I love that there's some real guys on here ! He reminds me of my ISP boss in the 90s! so nostalgic for me , and even my little gopher got a mention , you got your bbs screens , newsgroups , interviews..... Intro is my favorite , i want more modem sounds though, wheres my 56kflex groan????

[@theserialport]

Oh man, here we have a modem sound analyst! Thanks for the support! I think we'll need to pull you in for a game show where contestants listen to modem sounds and guess the speed.

[@craigjackson1290]

Hahaha I remember 3 different tones , not sure I can accurately place them all...... Started at 28.8.....

[@W1ldTangent]

There was a time when I was fluent in modem, I knew when it was going to connect or not well before the dialer window refreshed 😂

[@joseph_b319]

Great video. Man i miss early 90s computing, especially on the Macintosh computer. I think the problem with that device on why it is not power up is that you need to send it to the 8-bit guy for Retrobrighting.

[@Pendarr]

Seeing the name xmission immediately made me remember looking at Maddox’s site like 24 years ago. Wild!

[@sessionfiddler]

Memory lane. I worked tech support for an ISP that used QNX x86 machines to authenticate and provide networking via something called COM stax boxes connected to Supra external modems with the front and back face plates pulled off, stacked and had fans to blow air through them. Then we got the USR or 3COM 16 modems in a black box that looked like a VCR. Upgraded to TACACS for authentication. Eventually moved up to RADIUS.

[@g00glian0]

I run a Telegard BBS here in the Dayton, Ohio area, from my bedroom at my parent's house . Mega-Fun!

[@g00glian0]

I meant to say 'ran'...

[@sirflimflam]

2:09 I remember the Cyberspace Station. Was kind of surprised to see that entry in the video.

[@cyberpass]

how do you only have 22K subs? This stuff is great!

[@brentsummers7377]

I remember 'seeing' a demonstration of the World Wide Web around 1994 & there was so much interest I couldn't get close enough to the screen to see anything! There was just crazy interest. Before that demonstrations of email did not generate the same level of interest. While some adults got excited about email many kids did not.

[@wyohman00]

I ran an ISP at this point in time. Old DEC 5000, Livingston Portmasters and a TON of US Robotics Modems. It was cash intensive due to hardware and telecom costs. In a bigger city you could buy phone lines in bulk and pay a low rate (they had a special name that escapes me) since the incoming calls outweighed the outgoing calls. We paid $30 each line per month and found a ratio of 8:1 (customers to modems) meant no busy signals. Each Portmaster could support 30 modems (240 customers) so it didn't take long to have a room full of Portmasters and USR Sportsters. It was fun but the owner made no money (we were one of the first $19.95 per month for unlimited).

[@FlamingSoda1]

the thing at the start about how 2069 is when every single person will have internet access sounds more like a meme

[@JohnMassaglia]

The ISP I worked at in the mid to late nineties originally used a NeXT cube as their server and also had a bunch of external Courier modems. They later switched to using a regular PC running FreeBSD instead of NeXTSTEP.

[@minibikemadman]

so awesome..im 42 and started running my own bbs then a local bbs turned into a isp...good ol logon America haha

[@Zoeylindaringo]

i am looking forward to this!

[@AnonyDave]

At least I know my sparcstation classic still works 😅 It might've sat around for years, but did a modified hybrid of zuluscsi on bluescsi-like hardware about a year back and that worked on it :)

[@fununclenerfs]

That cliff hanger!

[@WilliamHaisch]

I may not be correct but I seem to remember that the power was switched on from a special key on the keyboard. It could also be a dead CMOS battery. Sun workstations running OpenBoot worked a lot like Macintosh computers with Open Firmware. The OpenBoot commands for Sun computers were very similar to Open Firmware commands for the Mac.

[@bionicgeekgrrl]

They have a battery much like the mac pram, if that fails they will not boot. Checking and replacing it may well get it booting. If using a cd drive on them to boot from they expect a different format from the standard windows uses, the drive needs to support it too.

[@The-i-Shakk]

There is a few ways people are doing this these days definitely on my list, I will probably go the basic route with the voip router etc.

[@Povilaz]

Very interesting!