ISP Profile: bedford.net

bedford.net is a small town ISP that once had the town to itself. But as competition heats up, is finding that challenges only make the company stronger.

by Patricia Fusco
of internetnews.com

Bedford, Pennsylvania is home to rustic covered bridges nestled in the cradle of the Industrial Revolution in America. It's a place where iron and steel, coal, and transportation once led as the nation's source of industrial might. It's also the home of a successful little Internet service provider known as bedford.net.

Operated by Jessica Gothie, bedford.net is a full service ISP offering dial-up access for less than $18 a month, premium filtered access, dedicated business connectivity, competitive Web hosting and list services.

Linux
Gothie said she runs the Internet service mostly on Intel processors operating on a Linux platform.

"Linux handles RADIUS, mail, DNS, most interactive web stuff, and the graphs. The web server for basic pages is still NT as is user web space and FTP," Gothie explained. "We outsource Usenet and we currently support about 2000 dial-up customers."

Services
While Web hosting is not yet a profitable venture for bedford.net, Gothie said she is working to change its approach to offering the service.

"Hosting is not a big moneymaker for us, but we're looking at getting into it more in the future," Gothie said. "Currently hosting about 10 domains on NT, but that is due to change in about two weeks, to a Cobalt box. I can and have rolled-my-own Apache, but I'd rather let someone else do the FrontPage silliness and worry about securing it and Cobalt does make a nice box for hosting."

Technical
Gothie operates bedford.net through a single point-of-presence in Bedford and a remote POP in Saxton.

"We run at a user-modem ratio of between 5 and 6 to one." Gothie explained. "Basically, this means few, if any busy signals. We are multi-homed to the Internet with a T1 to Cable & Wireless and another T1 to BBN/GTE Internetworking/Genuity or whatever they are calling themselves these days."

"We do full routes with BGP on our Cisco 3640, and, since we are not large enough to qualify for portable address space, our addresses come from both upstream providers, depending on whose form I feel like filling out that day."

Origin
Gothie said she established her ISP after nearly a decade in college when she decided to start generating an income for herself.

"I became an ISP in 1996 because, after eight years of college, I didn't have a job. My parents felt that eight years of college was on the way to being 'excessive'. They felt I should quit twinking around in the halls of academia and start producing an income," Gothie said.

"Personally, I didn't have any ideas along the lines of 'earn an honest wage'. However, my younger brother, who was running a BBS for his law school, thought we should start an ISP. Since he was still in law school, he though I should run the ISP, which, of course, would be a turnkey moneymaker, just a box or two in the back room."

"I thought it sounded like a good thing and we pushed the idea to my Dad. He was so enthused that I was considering honest work that he drew out his checkbook and funded the startup. The fact that I knew nothing about the Internet or servers or networking or programming or any of that stuff didn't really enter our minds," Gothie said.

"After all, I'd been on the Internet. I had a Netcom dialup account in February of 1996 and we re-sold accounts starting July 1996. What was there to know," Gothie laughed. " What, indeed," she added.

While discussing bedford.net's humble beginnings, Gothie discussed an interesting business analogy about the nature of the ISP game.

"You know, a license to cut hair is required in the state of Pennsylvania, but any idiot with a T1 can be an ISP," Gothie said. "Good thing, too, or I'd never had started the ISP. I spent a lot of time on a cliff-like learning curve that was steeper than I'd planned. But I've always been good with machinery and computers like me, so I didn't die in the process."

For the first three years business, Gothie said bedford.net's staff consisted of bookkeeping done by her aunt and a single support technician.

"I hired a tech-support employee at 1,200 users. Most people hire one at around 800," Gothie said. "We currently keep office hours from 8 am to 8 pm, Monday through Friday and 8 to noon on Saturdays. All of my users have my home telephone number in the event of a serious emergency. They are pretty responsible about not calling me for stupid stuff."

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