4/12/2005: A piece of Philadelphia ISP history

Undertoad · 04-12-2005, 01:15 PM

The time frame is 1994-95 - ancient history, when it comes to the Internet.

The Cellar was (roughly) the first system in Philadelphia to offer access to email and Usenet newsgroups, but Netaxs became the first system to offer actual IP services, first via the SLIP protocol, then via PPP.

The sudden first wave of demand for these things meant that Netaxs grew quickly from a hobby into a business. And therein lies the problem; somehow this growing beast wound up in the basement of Mark Thomas's rented twin in Wyndmoor. That's Mr. Thomas and his basement in the picture.

As long as phone company Bell was willing to run wires and equipment into that basement, Netaxs could expand and expand. In those days, running an ISP meant connecting voice lines ("plain old telephone service") into banks of modems. The consumer modems were the cheapest, so sometimes a growing internet provider would answer demand by getting Bell to run a bunch more phone lines, and then running to the nearest CompUSA and buying a cartfull of US Robotics modems off the shelves. It seemed reasonable, for a while, to construct wooden shelving for everything. And what's a few more cables here and there?

Around about this time, I visited the Netaxs basement - the Cellar needed a new card that Mr. Thomas graciously sold to me, and he offered to show me the place. Along with the water heater, about 5 feet away from all this was a washer-dryer and utility sink. I became very, very frightened indeed for the 2000 or so subscribers that they had built up by that time. But Mark and Netaxs owner Avi Freedman were good guys, and were shortly to improve the situation, so I never spread the story of how Netaxs was one broken water pipe away from cutting off over half of residential Internet access in Philadelphia.

It took several years for the equipment manufacturers and the phone companies to innovate standards and better ways to accomplish all this.

Today, every company involved in communications in any way is struggling to provide the same thing that this basement started providing back then.

04-12-2005, 01:15 PM	#1
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	4/12/2005: A piece of Philadelphia ISP history The time frame is 1994-95 - ancient history, when it comes to the Internet. The Cellar was (roughly) the first system in Philadelphia to offer access to email and Usenet newsgroups, but Netaxs became the first system to offer actual IP services, first via the SLIP protocol, then via PPP. The sudden first wave of demand for these things meant that Netaxs grew quickly from a hobby into a business. And therein lies the problem; somehow this growing beast wound up in the basement of Mark Thomas's rented twin in Wyndmoor. That's Mr. Thomas and his basement in the picture. As long as phone company Bell was willing to run wires and equipment into that basement, Netaxs could expand and expand. In those days, running an ISP meant connecting voice lines ("plain old telephone service") into banks of modems. The consumer modems were the cheapest, so sometimes a growing internet provider would answer demand by getting Bell to run a bunch more phone lines, and then running to the nearest CompUSA and buying a cartfull of US Robotics modems off the shelves. It seemed reasonable, for a while, to construct wooden shelving for everything. And what's a few more cables here and there? Around about this time, I visited the Netaxs basement - the Cellar needed a new card that Mr. Thomas graciously sold to me, and he offered to show me the place. Along with the water heater, about 5 feet away from all this was a washer-dryer and utility sink. I became very, very frightened indeed for the 2000 or so subscribers that they had built up by that time. But Mark and Netaxs owner Avi Freedman were good guys, and were shortly to improve the situation, so I never spread the story of how Netaxs was one broken water pipe away from cutting off over half of residential Internet access in Philadelphia. It took several years for the equipment manufacturers and the phone companies to innovate standards and better ways to accomplish all this. Today, every company involved in communications in any way is struggling to provide the same thing that this basement started providing back then.

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