Building Community Internet Networks - Part 2

I've received email asking that I continue discussion of how we started one of the first Community Internet Networks in the U.S. “What were the first projects which got the RAIN Community Internet Network going?”

We had worked for nearly two years designing and building an early BBS based Community Information Network which we tested using servers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For the first year we worked through the Education Departments server as a test project, designing the user interface and initial content. Second year we were on Engerhub, the Physics and Engineering server. It was there we settled on the first solid interface that let us design a Community level Network that anyone with a modem could log into for access local government, education and health information. It was different from the average local BBS in that it ran off a major server, made use of new interface options like Gopher and provided the first “Internet Bandwidth” available to the Community in Santa Barbara California. That first bandwidth was basically a 56k frame relay circuit from SurfNet, which was what the University used in those days.

We soon needed a more permanent home for the Network, so with the help of the Dean of the Physics Department we received a National Science Foundation Grant for our “Pacific Rim Business and Education Network”. We also received a grant from Sun Microsystems for our first Server. We were a Unix Network from the beginning.

As a result of that first NSF grant we brought together over 900 non-profit agencies and over the next few years put local County and City governments online, put the County School District onto the Internet and created the first regional business Network with over 2,000 local small businesses taking part. All of this soon evolved into an Internet System as we know it today. But not until ppp connections, html, graphics and a whole new generation of windows and mac operating systems became mainstream.

The Public Internet had begun and RAIN's National Public Broadcasting Network became one of the first in the U.S. to take the Internet out to the Community. Crew from the McNeil Lehr Hour spent 3 days with us to interview and learn about this new Internet back in 1994/95 which led to one of the early broadcasts on TV about this new “Internet Phenomena”.


In my next Web Log I'll review how the Network first moved off the University Campus to a local church, brought in frame relay to rival the University's bandwidth and setup 200 24k baud modems for the community and region to dial in with.