Mailing Lists: Apple Mailing Lists
Image of Mac OS face in stamp
 
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: ISP Tools & Techniques

At 10:30 AM -0400 7/29/04, Frank Lowney wrote:
We are looking at ways and means to provide ISP-like services to faculty and students at our university.

What, pray tell, does that mean? Do you mean you need to provide IP access via dialup/broadband/wifi/...? Or do you mean you just want to provide hosting services?

However, the prospect of managing thousands of accounts in anything other than a highly automated fashion is a show stopper. We simply don't have the personnel.

Then perhaps you should reconsider. There are plenty of ISPs in the world already, do we really need ones that don't have the resources to do the job?

Thinking that ISPs face the same issues in order to compete successfully, I wondered if there are resources (web sites, FAQs, software) for MacOS X Server users who are operating as ISPs.

I've set up a few ISPs and NSPs operating nation wide. The trick is not the backend services you're so concerned about.

We are especially interested in:

1) GUI interfaces usable by clerical personnel for creating, suspending and deleting accounts
2) Relies on WebDAV instead of FTP
3) Establishes disk quotas and provides user management tools (graphic display of remaining disk space)
4) Enables users to change PWs after an initial (programmatically developed) PW is assigned.

We'd even be interested in a reasonably priced commercial package that does all of this. Essentially, we'd like to offer our constituencies a dotMac work-alike. Thus, Apple should market what they have already developed. Have they?

Well it's easy to ask the above, but it has so many undefineds that it's a black hole.

Most ISPs operate accounts out of LDAP or SQL with RADIUS for access authentication. From there it's just a matter of interfacing the data so it's self-evident. So the GUIs and all will be custom for the type of operation you're running and business model you'll use. Not to mention WiFi operations, which are now where this business is stumbling, requires specific thinking andtechnologies.

But the undefineds here are what drives the process. For instance depending on the DSLAMs and ATM switches you'll be deploying will drive a lot of the equation.

Of course on the basic side of all this have you not investigated the many open source packages for running backend ISP/NSP services available at sourceforge and the like?

So what is it you're really looking for?
--

-dhan

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Shoop email@hidden
Consulting Internet Architect email@hidden
AIM: iWiring http://www.iwiring.net/
http://www.ustsvs.com/

pgp key fingerprint: FAC0 9434 B5A5 24A8 D0AF 12B1 7840 3BE7 3736 DE0B

iWiring designs and supports Internet systems and networks based on
Mac OS X, unix, and Open Source application technologies and offers
24x7, guaranteed support to registered clients, at affordable rates.
_______________________________________________
macos-x-server mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/macos-x-server
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
When responding to messages, please keep your quotes short.
References: 
 >ISP Tools & Techniques (From: Frank Lowney <email@hidden>)



Visit the Apple Store online or at retail locations.
1-800-MY-APPLE

Contact Apple | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2007 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.