With a user-to-modem ratio of nearly 10:1, busy signals are a rarity and the on-ramp to the Internet is a smooth one.

The rest of the LAN

Getting dialed-up is only part of the story. Once you're online, having a 56k modem isn't going to be of much use if the host machines are bogged down or are just plain slow to begin with! It's kind of like trying to use a really big straw to suck on frozen molasses. The straw may look impressive, but the molasses isn't going anywhere fast, regardless.

To prevent such problems, Alphanet divides up the work load between several very fast machines:

• Commercial websites are hosted on a 143 MHz UltraSPARC, 64MB of RAM, and a pair of 2.1 GigaByte hard drives.

• Personal websites and modem dial-ups are handled by a 167 MHz UltraSPARC with 64MB of RAM.

• Like to read USENET news? Our 40MHz Sparc Compstation with 128MB of RAM and nearly 15 GB of disk space will smoothly deliver well over 30,000 newsgroups right to your computer.

In order to assure you the most reliable, efficient service possible with minimum downtime due to system crashes and the like, all of our servers run on Sun Microsystems' Solaris 2.5.1 operating system. A Unix operating system, Solaris has been for years what Windows NT and other operating systems only hope to be.

But none of this would do you any good if we didn't have a reliable source of electricity to run everything! So, everything is battery-backed with APC SmartUPS 1000s, in addition to a generator in case the power goes out for extended periods (like when hurricanes come through and knock power out for 22 hours).

If you would be interested to know how you can put all this power to work for you, please contact us directly by using our Contact Form.