ISP Survival Guide: Strategies for Running a Competitive ISP (Paperback)

~ (Author) "This chapter describes the developmental timeline of the Internet provider environment..." (more)
Key Phrases: carriage infrastructure, established communications industry, carriage efficiency, United States, Destination Link Hops, Domain Name System (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Running a successful Internet Service Provider (ISP) requires excellence in many areas. Good ISPs must keep on top of all the technical issues involved in high-traffic Internet connectivity. They must deal with the public, including its most technically incompetent segments. On top of all that, they have to make a profit in a competitive business environment. ISP Survival Guide does a good job of explaining all sides of the industry.

Rather than tie his book to the specifics of particular hardware and software products, Geoff Huston explains ISP technologies without implementation details. He writes at great length about the various interior and exterior routing protocols without mentioning specific products. He also covers the pros and cons of various data-transmission technologies, including ATM, ISDN, Frame Relay, and other systems, in addition to analog modems. Huston pays attention to quality of service issues--a subject that is not well covered elsewhere.

ISP Survival Guide also provides insight into the business aspects of running an ISP. Huston provides specific dollar figures that you can use to estimate capital equipment purchase costs and per-account annual maintenance costs. The book also contains advice on doing business with other providers that you're connecting to. --David Wall

Product Description

Introducing the ISP bible for the networking and telecomm industry.

To put it mildly, cyberspace business is booming. There are presently more than 6,000 Internet Service Providers worldwide, and about 600 new providers are springing up each quarter. However, the ISP business is still very young and without precedent-no how-to manual or foolproof start-up recipe exists for those who want a piece of the action. As ISPs mount an ambitious challenge against phone companies for control of the $300 billion telecommunications market, they need a step-by-step planning guide to creating, developing, and profiting from a solid service provider business. Networking pioneer Geoff Huston describes the technologies, business practices, and policies required to be a formidable player in the ISP business, covering architecture principles, network management, infrastructure, business models, public policy, future growth, and much more.

ISP (Internet Service Provider) companies provide access for end-users to the Internet. ISPs range from small, regional providers to larger, well-known companies like America Online and Sprint.

The Wiley Networking Council's mission is to fill an important gap in networking literature by publishing books that put technology into perspective for decision makers who need an implementation strategy, a vendor and outsourcing strategy, and a product and design strategy. It is comprised of four of the most influential leaders of the networking community:

Lyman Chapin: Founding trustee of the Internet Society; chief scientist of BBN, a division of GTE Internetworking.

Scott Bradner: Trustee of the Internet Society; Director of the Harvard University Network Switching Test Lab; Network World columnist.

Vinton Cerf: Founding trustee of the Internet Society, often called the "Father of the Internet;" Senior Vice President, MCI/WorldCom.

Ed Kozel: CTO and Senior VP for Product Development, Cisco Corporation,

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons; 1 edition (October 30, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471314994
• ISBN-13: 978-0471314998
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,025,209 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply outstanding value..., January 12, 2000

By	Max Grenkowitz "BookWorm" (Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a must if you want to set-up, maintain and survive with an ISP business and success in mind. I was in the process of setting up a ISP business and desperately looking for some advice, insight, requirements, and the lot.

When I started reading this book I was overwhelmed by the amount of information... it seemed all to long to get anywhere... I started skipping pages, sections, chapters until I realised how valuable the contents was. Back to the beginning and I started all over again, reading this book... thoroughly. I've read it twice in meantime and parts of it repeatedly over the one year since I've got this book.

It is still (and of course) possible to take the cowboy approach, considering the modem-ratio as the 'holy' figure which does it all for you, and jump into it... believe it or not, you will realise sooner than you may be pleased or anticipate, that you find yourself in critical situations, capacity-wise, service-wise. You could have had avoided it all by doing your homework... part of it would be reading this book, which gives you all the information to base your decision-making process on.

We have setup quickly some LINUX boxes, Apache, RADIUS, sendmail over a period of one week, started quickly and grew faster than expected... and retreated!, to prevent to go down, due to the lack of policies, procedures, and man-power required despite the capability of high-automation... we have been warned ;-)

You may think this book is for the big guys, you are wrong... you either have to understand what you are getting yourself into, you have to know the game or someone who knows it... this book will help you understand the game. It inspired me to go for further more in-depth training (currently persuing my CCNP certification).

I'm happy with the style of writing, academic, accurate, including the background and the history to understand the Internet's constant and sometimes rapid change... IPv6 is to 'released' in six months... nevertheless, I was a bit surprised about the lengthiness of some sentences, which I believed are more a custom of Germans (like myself)...

If you really want to know what's going on or what to expect, this is it! It is for the serious reader, it is not a "for Dummies" edition... or have you ever wondered what makes the difference between (say) Excel in 12 hours compared to Using Excel on 900 pages!

Enjoy... I can only recommend it.

Max Grenkowitz, Systems Engineer, MCNE, MCSE

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A call to reason, July 12, 2000

By	Marc Harris (Raleigh NC) - See all my reviews

Readers who found this book lucid and helpful must be part of the editorial staff or the publisher's company.

After reading other's negative comments and passing them off as cursory and badly evaluated, I bought the book anyway. To my surprise, the negative comments were understated. The book was poorly written, has enormous gaps in the telecommunications area as related to the practical buildout of an ISP at both the hardware and business level. I returned the book after 10 days of thorough and painful reading. I cannot recommend someone spend money on this book. My apologies to the author but this is an honest response. The author could also use a few more years of grammar and composition before he publishes another book. I'm sure he knows his field but he simply cannot communicate it.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars misleading title, April 30, 2000

By A Customer

This book misses the point, written by techie who worked for a University network that was sold to telco which vowed to crush every ISP in the country, the title is somewhat ironical.

This dude has never managed a real commercial ISP in the business sense. Other then a few technical tid bits you should already know it offers little in the way of "survival strategies".

Maybe that's the point if you expect to survive in the business world focusing on router protocols and authentication servers your days are numbered.

If you are thinking of setting up an ISP this book covers some of the basics your technical people should already know inside out. If you are looking for advise on survival in the current market place forget it.

I would recommend browsing through the cisco online documentation its free and more up to date for technical details and freshmeat its related sites and debian.org for linux info.

This book is dating quickly as you would expect an internet book to do, emerging trends in adsl, 3rd gen gsm etc didn't really exist when written.