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A few decent things I could find online that jive with what I remember: https://www.patton.com/technotes/build_yourself_an_isp.pdf https://www.patton.com/techn

A few decent things I could find online that jive with what I remember: https://www.patton.com/technotes/build_yourself_an_isp.pdf https://www.patton.com/technotes/build_yourself_an_isp.pdf http://www.gwi.net/behind-the-scenes-of-a-90s-internet-start-up-2/ http://www.gwi.net/behind-the-scenes-of-a-90s-internet-start... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8352432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8352432 The absolute minimum, and representative of the very first dial-up ISPs: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2025 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/2025 http://www.datamation.com/erp/article.php/615281/My-own-private-ISP.htm http://www.datamation.com/erp/article.php/615281/My-own-priv... There used to be a lot of nice material on this subject but a lot of it has been obsolete and rotted away from the web over the last 15-20 years. The larger dial-up ISPs used Cisco AS series boxes (or equivalent) with PRI (i.e.: phone over T1) connections (24 lines/each) to a centralized RADIUS server for authentication. They are/were the last hold outs providing dial up. Smaller ISPs were more of a '94 to '99 thing. Usually they used cyclades or equivalent serial port cards with up to 16 serial ports per card and an external modem per port. Eventually this morphed into boxes with multiple modems in them and access servers that did the ppp termination and the authentication (to a RADIUS server) as scale increased. US Robotics was probably the best reputed player in the modem space.

halbritt 10y ago
Lots of people used the US Robotics Total Control boxes in the early 90s. http://www.kmj.com/tcont.html http://www.kmj.com/tcont.html
- acveilleux 10y ago
  That's what I had in mind when I said "boxes with multiple modems in them".
- vidarh 10y ago
  They were also way too expensive for a lot of smaller ISPs.
jsjohnst 10y ago
In my smaller regional ISP we started off using USR courier and sportster modems with Cyclades cards before moving over to Livingston Port masters. I ended up selling the company before moving to all digital incoming lines (needed to support 56k modems).
- vidarh 10y ago
  Did exactly the same.... We had sporters hanging off the wall for a while (couldn't pack them tightly due to the crappy ventilation on the Sporters, but they were light, so clamping the cables to a suitable plate and fitting it to the wall worked great....) The local telco had problems supplying enough lines from the nearest exchange, so they ended up hanging a thick cable bundle in the trees for several hundred meters, make a hole in one of our windows and put a large multiplexer cabinet in our office... Then three months later we moved to different offices - they were not pleased.
  - jsjohnst 10y ago
    We got metal wire shelves and kept each shelf fairly close together (about 6-8 inches). We had 10 selves per rack and 18 modems per 3ft x 6ft shelf. 10 racks and related additional hardware (switches, terminals, routers, CSU/DSUs, etc) fit in about 600sq ft of office space with space to spare for technician workbenches. Could do much higher density these days of course, but it was the mid-90s and we thought we were doing good at the time.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      We didn't quite get to the size where we needed that before we sold off the dial up business (for a pittance; we contributed to accidentally set off a price war in our market with incumbents with deep pockets - it was no fun, but I learned a lot)
      - jsjohnst 10y ago
        I got lucky in that regard. The larger company in our area decided it was better to buy us out than compete on quality of service, so we were in a position to better negotiate terms of sale.

halbritt 10y ago

Lots of people used the US Robotics Total Control boxes in the early 90s. http://www.kmj.com/tcont.html http://www.kmj.com/tcont.html

acveilleux 10y ago
That's what I had in mind when I said "boxes with multiple modems in them".
vidarh 10y ago
They were also way too expensive for a lot of smaller ISPs.

jsjohnst 10y ago

In my smaller regional ISP we started off using USR courier and sportster modems with Cyclades cards before moving over to Livingston Port masters. I ended up selling the company before moving to all digital incoming lines (needed to support 56k modems).

vidarh 10y ago
Did exactly the same.... We had sporters hanging off the wall for a while (couldn't pack them tightly due to the crappy ventilation on the Sporters, but they were light, so clamping the cables to a suitable plate and fitting it to the wall worked great....) The local telco had problems supplying enough lines from the nearest exchange, so they ended up hanging a thick cable bundle in the trees for several hundred meters, make a hole in one of our windows and put a large multiplexer cabinet in our office... Then three months later we moved to different offices - they were not pleased.
- jsjohnst 10y ago
  We got metal wire shelves and kept each shelf fairly close together (about 6-8 inches). We had 10 selves per rack and 18 modems per 3ft x 6ft shelf. 10 racks and related additional hardware (switches, terminals, routers, CSU/DSUs, etc) fit in about 600sq ft of office space with space to spare for technician workbenches. Could do much higher density these days of course, but it was the mid-90s and we thought we were doing good at the time.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    We didn't quite get to the size where we needed that before we sold off the dial up business (for a pittance; we contributed to accidentally set off a price war in our market with incumbents with deep pockets - it was no fun, but I learned a lot)
    - jsjohnst 10y ago
      I got lucky in that regard. The larger company in our area decided it was better to buy us out than compete on quality of service, so we were in a position to better negotiate terms of sale.