Power.Net Information

POWER.NET provides Internet services to a growing number of people, thanks to Karl's efforts in teaching a community class about the Internet and Dirk's efforts in programming a custom menu system that makes it easier for people to navigate the early Internet, before web browsers, in the age of telnet, email and usenet, when the Unix commandline ruled, computer memory measured in kilobytes, hard drive space in megabytes and CPU speed in megahertz, when social networking meant email, usenet, IRC, MUDs and MOOs. A medical transcription company in Manhattan Beach liked our ideas on how to use the Internet to lower the costs of medical transcriptions. Trading a free T1 for free office space in a windowless storage room on the third floor of 3601 Rosecrans Avenue in Manhattan Beach allowed us to leave the kitchen. We wired the building with ethernet and provided Internet services to many tenants, often including custom Linux routers/firewalls. T1 circuits grew like roots. When Records Plus was sold we rented the office next door. The new office was too big and too expensive for us, but it shared a wall with Records Plus and moving all those telecom circuits to another location would have been difficult. For a few months, the resulting lack of funds and the need for 24/7 operations meant that the Dirk and Ute slept in the office. Having decided to move back to Michigan, Karl had sold his equity to Dirk. Part of the office was converted to a highly secure data center and we now offered colocation in addition to network connections. Hughes Aircraft, Boeing and NASA trusted us with servers. Sony connected the Culver City lot with dual T1 circuits. Two medical doctors and a telecom consultant subleased Office+Internet, an early version of today's popular co-working. Many Internet entrepreneurs discussed their business plans in our offices. A few consumer ISPs became our customers, we focussed on businesses. Elias ran what became www.securityfocus.com from the computer under his desk. Steve sang warsongs while we played ...