[nsp] ISP 101

[Marlow, Travis]

I've been administering a small ISP for about 2.5 years now.  I don't have any ISP contacts in the Industry and have tried my best to glean and understanding of proper procedures and configs from books and mailing lists such as this.  I had no previous networking experience before this job, other than a few Cat2924 configs.  I had a network in place when I took over, but it didn't work that well and was put together by and "enterprise" guy.  Not saying that, thats bad, but it wasn't what was described in my work "bible", ISP Essentials.  I went to Cisco Networkers in 2002 and tried to get one of the Cisco guys to "bless" my new design.  Which he said, "Yeah, that will work."  I don't want it to just work, though.  Getting to my questions, where do the people on this list that maintain ISPs go for training/seminars/meetings?  What type of policies are in use in the ISP realm?  What type of tools for security/monitoring/reporting/billing/maintenance do you use?  Our company provides the triple play of services to the residential user over coax.  We also have the CLEC side of the house using Bell's copper and our own fiber to deliver phone and data service.  Everyone that wants Internet has to come through my network, buy because we're not only and ISP, it doesn't get the attention that it deserves and the one guy, me, that is concerned about how to make this engine run more efficiently is completely lost on where to start.  I think that there is some money to be made in books that pick up where "ISP Essentials" left off.  I would appreciate any help from the experienced service providers on this list.  BTW, I had to figure out what RADB and ARIN was when I started, so that lets you know where I'm coming from.  We have about 26,000 customers right now, none of them are dial-up.  I have implemented 4 12012 GSRs with a DPT ring connecting our two headends in the metro area.  All other routers in use are 7206VXR/NPE300.  I also have 6509/sup1a-msfc running SLB and maintain all the PIX 520s.  I been shaped by "fire" to some degree, because it was 'make it work or get out of the way'.  Anyway, I want to do this thing right, so any help would be much appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

What is the PGP thing all about?


Travis Marlow - network engineer - Everest Connections

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