An ISP of their own (was RE: [rescue] Being jobless)

[Michael Schiller]

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On Monday, July 28, 2003, at 02:08  PM, Brian Dunbar wrote:

> My assumption is that dial-up, while dead or dying is still a viable 
> service.
> Not everyone has, or needs, broadband or wants to finagle with a 
> wireless
> setup. Not to mention folks in the sticks who have dial-up access but 
> never,
> ever will see broadband unless it's on a satellite.

I had originally thought of starting a small ISP, as I live in a small 
town of only 15k people. What's totally amazing is that here in Newport 
Tenn, Bellsouth offers DSL service, the cable company (Charter 
Communications) has cablemodem service to about 75% of the town, and 
there's even a wireless ISP (www.planetc.com) that has 2 separate 
towers, one for the town, and the other for the county residents (as 
well as several other towns/cities serviced by wireless from the same 
company), not to mention dial-up being offered by the town newspaper, 
effectively eliminating those that don't want a national company, and 
want a local one :(

What I had thought about was the possibility of offering services to 
one or more of these various local ISP's that would be unique, such as 
Unix shells on a 20 CPU SMP machine, something most of the local ISP's 
probably don't have. I was also considering offering the Unix shell 
deal to one of the ISPs, along with doing the admin required for them 
in return for co-locating the SC2000 there. (basically let them charge 
what they want for a shell on the machine, and in return I get the 
machine running with a better connection than just a cablemodem. (not 
to mention that it won't fit in my current home).

Of course, just having a machine running doesn't make me any money, but 
I would hope that it will give me some exposure that might get me a 
paying position :)

Can anyone suggest other applications for a 20 CPU machine running Unix 
that would be something difficult for an ISP to offer with their 
current hardware? (something I can offer that they can't easily 
duplicate on cheaper hardware they already have?)


- -Mike
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