[PLUG] Coop ISP - was Re: Metrofi wins Rogue of the Week

[Keith Lofstrom]

On Jan 10, 2008 7:28 PM, Mike Connors <mconnors1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the age of co-ops, maybe it's time for the first co-op ISP right here
> in Portland. I know there's a community colocation project in San
> Francisco. http://www.sfccp.net/
> Then we can tell them all to go stick it! Whos's with me?

Uhh...

The second co-op ISP was right here in Portland, Rain Net.  Around
1985 IIRC.  The first was "The Little Garden" in Palo Alto a few
months earlier.

We brought the first "high speed" internet into the Portland area,
through a T1 line from Mae West into Randy Bush's house, then divided
it down from there with modems.  Split it out further by various other
sites;  I fed from machines at Alan Batie's house (later to become
Aracnet).  Other secondary Rain Net sites became Pacifier, and Teleport
(bought by Earthlink).   At one point, Portland was the best connected
city on the planet (we had a few hundred active machines).  The bay
area had more, but spread among a lot larger population.  History
repeated itself with the Personal Telco Project;  Portland led the
world again ( What's next? ).

When Rain Net became too much for Randy to handle, it went
professional.  My friend Robert Chew managed it for few years, as
it grew to dozens of employees.  Then Rain Net got bought and bought
again.  I think they are currently part of Nippon Telephone, and only
handle business customers (I had a class C network, 256 routable IP
addresses, before the suits kicked me out).
 
Providers like Comcast and Qwest and Verizon are quite recent.

Most of the business ended up with corporate providers because running
an ISP is a lot of work, and the economies of scale are massive.  My
sister and her ex-husband were running LavaNet in Honolulu, and the
strain destroyed their marriage.  

History repeats itself.  Read the history of Theodore Vail and the
Bell Telephone network.  Then imagine yourself setting up an alternative
telephone network infrastructure, 100 years after 1907 when Vail started
buying up (or stealing through state legislatures) all the little
independents to build a national network.

Be very grateful that we have multiple massive networks serving most
areas of Portland.  Even if they are all Evil Corporations, at least
they are somewhat competitive and there are slightly different flavors
of vanilla.  Back before cell phones and VOIP, you used the one telephone
monopoly, with bundled long distance, or you used ham radio, or you
sent letters.  Hell, in some parts of the world, there is still only one
ISP and one phone company, and they are both owned by the post office.

It is usually new technology the opens up new communication possibilities.
ISP has already happened, and is now a commodity.  Probably the next
opportunity is mesh, or 802.11N WiMax.  But once that starts serving
a lot of people, economies of scale will kick in again, and the little
guys will be too expensive compared to the big guys.  Again.  

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs