Re: FreeNET?

[The Wizard of Oz <wizard@emeraldcity.gov>]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 10:35:10 -0700, julian814 wrote:

> Thanks guys, for confirming this. It's a shame there isn't anything
> like it around today.
> 
> 
> Ralph Glatt

	In rural Manitoba (Canada) we have some. They aren't difficult to set up.
The hardware is cheap. The expensive part is dealing with the phone
company. About the time the government sold it, they were looking to raise
the rates on the phone lines for people like the freenet. It was one of
many reasons why the Winnipeg freenet folded. 

	I ran a business with a friend which depended on phone lines and modems.
First the phone company wanted us to pay extra to get tweaked lines. We
said no (asking for a line with tone dialing gave us that anyway). Then
they wanted to sell us a T1 line. We said no because we didn't need a net
connection or that kind of bandwidth. Finally they got us by raising the
rates on the multiplexed lines from $30.00 each to $45.00 each (four lines).

	Anyhow, setting up a freenet is easy. Get a *NIX box, a bunch of
multiplexed phone lines, and a bank of modems. After that, ask permission
from one of the high speed providers if they'd be willing to allow a
freenet to hang off their system. Set up a mail server (easy), a news
server with text only groups (easy), an ftp server (easy), Apache (not as
easy but still not bad), and a terminal server (easy). Set the quota to
1MB and you're ready to rock. If you don't connect it to the net, this
will work well as a local BBS. In any event, use iptables to control
access.

				Later
				Mike