SITEMAP: Freenet - coping with free demand

The changes began in January 1998, when they set up a local call rate national access number, but this still failed to gain them more than 1000 customers. In July 1998 however, a telco (Telinco) offered them the chance to have a large percentage of call charges refunded, due to their status as ‘heavy users', in addition to the use of an 0845 prefix. This prompted Athene to become ‘free' - something no one had done at the time.

“We were the first to offer free national access,” says Julian Dyer, MD of Athene. “Although X-treme were ahead by a week or two, they were not offering 100% local coverage. There was a lot of skepticism initially - everyone said that it was impossible to do. Then Dixons Freeserve started up, and everyone changed their tune!” So did demand, which rocketed from 8-900 subscriptions to 120,000 in 18 months.

Originally, the company was based on Windows NT, mainly because it was seen to be simple to operate, update and generally work with in-house, a situation which Dyer says, “was a good idea at the time,” with no need or money for a UNIX/Linux server. Pipex supplied their feed for the first few years, and claim that Athene was the first ISP to have a fully working NT platform.

The company still runs with a staff of 4-5, which has remained reasonably constant since the early days, in spite of having to handle problems as and when they arose. This was a frequent event: “the servers were basically handheld, in that they were just a bit unstable, and needed constant updating, sometimes at 2.00am! That was the main benefit of being a free service,” says Dyer, “customer expectations were lower than otherwise - we got away with murder in the beginning. Although, having said that, a review at the time said we were the most reliable, which makes you wonder what the competition was doing!”

Freenet offers most of the usual ISP services, such as dialup access, links with search engines, news and home/web page hosting, mainly using Microsoft NIS (Network Information System) with a proxy server for the news services. However, the most popular function has always been the web-based mail, which Dyer thinks has attracted most of their sign-ups.

The ISP chose Gordano's Windows NT based mail server. Struggling with “0%” finance proved to be a problem, unsurprisingly, and was one reason for the choice. Athene managed to gain an unlimited licence for the programme, which cost them 8-900 - a bargain at the time. In addition, as Dyer says: “it was probably the only NT mail package available in 1996.”

NT Mail provides a range of features, such as unlimited domains and a free list server, automated dialup, firewall compatibility and scaleable bulk email, as well as a web based mail client. There are a number of additional plug-ins, like JUCE, an anti spam programme, and Virus Scanner, a bi-directional viral defense system.

The basic mail programme has clearly been up to the job - having been used for two years - but the anti virus software was mainly ignored by Athene. “It would have slowed the authentication processes down too much - 100,000 users on a single server constitutes pretty heavy usage - and we were loath to put anything not entirely necessary in the way,” says Dyer. The same goes for Gordano's JUCE anti-Spam filter which, while effective, has only recently been used to a minimal degree.

“I wouldn't complain of the software at all,” continues Dyer. “Its simplicity helped in the early days, partly because we were all familiar with NT, and the product has matured vastly since then. Its range of functions have proved useful too; the web mail side of the programme saved us constructing a full UNIX powered front end. It really is all things to all people. As an example, we are testing a Mirapoint custom mail package as part of our upgrade plans - which is a hardware/software appliance, using LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and costs around 25-35,000 - and it has significantly less features than NT does.”

Not everything has been straightforward. NT Mail has been through two major upgrades and about ten minor revisions, which Dyer says, “has been interesting to keep up with, in spite of the team at Gordano who have always been eager to help.” And Telinco was unable to cope with the rapid increase in demand, so the access was “not of the highest quality” right up until March ‘99. “In addition, it took roughly 60-90 days for the revenue to come through, so everything had to be done on a shoestring.” This is still a problem, although Colt Telecom was soon called in to ease the loading.

Still, the purchase of a Solaris based proxy server about a year ago helped bring about current stability, augmented with a leased line from INS, the London-based backbone provider. This is to be replaced with a router and links installed with European optical network provider Fibrenet, which should be running by the first week of February, if a planned merger with three other ISPs goes smoothly.

For the future, Athene is “keen to take advantage of 0800 numbers” and is building a new system, which will require the moving of their feed from the Docklands hosting area Telehouse 1 to Telehouse 2000 - simply because it has more physical rack space to offer. Dyer is also looking in the direction of full virtual hosting, which should become possible with the implementation of load spreading technology. However, in spite of the progression, he adds there is still a possibility of hosting with NT, as it is still working well and now authenticating through a back-end SQL (Structured Query Language)

server, which adds flexibility. “Anyway, it's better the devil you know,” points out Dyer.



Athene has also moved locations, in order to be nearer the Fareham landing point of the Project Oxygen pan-global network - an undersea fiber-optic cable which when finished in 2003 will handle about 2.56 terabits of information. However, this process has been interrupted somewhat by the compay's merger plans, which involve another three ISP's at least. As Dyer says: “We now have to think about all the merger parties, as well as just Athene, which is stalling things a bit, although we are looking to acquire even more ISP's in the near future.”

www.freenet.co.uk