On Mon, Jul 09, 2007, Mike Tewner wrote about "Re: [SUMMARY] Current status of Israeli ISPs": > My point is that the whole operation was one room - those 2 racks and 3 > desks covering phone support and sys admins. > > ISP'ing, at least in the US *can* be done on a smallish scale - on the order > of a few hundred customers.
Things were simpler in the age of modems. Want to run an ISP for 3 people? Just get 3 phone lines and 3 modems, a connection to a bigger ISP, and you're done. But today, nobody would want to call your ISP using a modem - they would want to use ADSL and/or cable to connect to you. This brings up two serious problem: First, because of how this technology works Bezek/HOT need to recognize you. I have a hunch that they wouldn't, unless you can bring big business and show a license from the goverment - not something you can do for 10 friends. Your second problem is that much of the service no longer depends on you - in the old days, everybody had a phone and nobody would blame their ISP if their phone stopped working (and besides, it wouldn't happen) or their phone socket was improperly installed. But today, you need to deal with ADSL/Cable hardware, "routers", "dialers", "MTU" and a whole lot of issues that are actually imposed, caused and dealt with, by HOT or Bezek - not by the ISP. >From my dealings with my ISP, using HOT's cable, I understand that they have very close (although not quite perfect, to say the least) connections to HOT and need to transfer configuration files, and need their help to debug some of the connection problems. In fact, when I have a problem, I usually call HOT directly, not my ISP! What would it have helped me if my ISP was full of Linux experts, if I end up calling HOT anyway? This situation is a far-cry from the situation in the modem days, where your ISP could rely on your phone "just working", and didn't need to cooperate with Bezek about "configuring your phone". -- Nadav Har'El | Monday, Jul 9 2007, 23 Tammuz 5767 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |----------------------------------------- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln256%Pln256/snlbx] http://nadav.harel.org.il |sb3135071790101768542287578439snlbxq'|dc ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
