roland Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 Hello I have few knowledge about what's an isp and I would be interested to know some basis of what they usually do, how does it work, what can I do myself. I'm not too interested for now on technical detail but I wish to have a better understanding on how it works, who do what. I know ISP can provide 3 different thing: - name hosting, - connection, - disk space (web, e-mail) I know the disk space can be on my box. So what would I have to setup ? A smtp server I guess, - a e-mail (pop ?) server, (qmails ?, sendmail ?) - a web server (apache ?), - what else ? I know also that there is companies that are only registar like https://www.gandi.net/index.html.en what do they do ? In short, if I wanted to do there job myself what would I have to do ? Connection: same question than for registar. If I didn't had an isp and still wanted to be connected, in short, what would I have to do ? Then gowator said: As a minimum you just need a dynamic dns record! UR mail server just accepts requests to ports at that address... can you or somebody else explain a little more ? I know it's not simple, I'm not going to start a new isp company myself, it's just to have a better understanding. thanks roland Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 I know it's not simple, I'm not going to start a new isp company myself, it's just to have a better understanding. Why ever not!!!! Go on strike one for capitalism.....:D Basically, and I hope anon will add to this....(this is my understanding folks NOT FACT) Firstly you need a way onto the internet. That is you need a route from whatever access you have onto the internet backbone.... How you get this is country dependent.... AND not easy or cheap. Secondly you need the internets servers.... You need DNS for instance. DNS all comes from (5?) main DNS machines which are the primary layer.. Secondary DNS then goes to wanadoo etc. and they update their DNS records from the 5 masters (in the beginning there ws only one) This is FREE, anyone can do it with a domain name. Which is what you need next..... Registering domain names rests with the ICAN authority. Each country gets its 2 letter code and some elect to basically sell it (.tv) So you can ask for a .fr domain and youll get it, its usually for little cost you just need to supply the registration details. Amongst other things this means you need a email address (postmaster@domainname) Alternatively you can use a temporary domain name which is 'owned' by someone else. Some of these are charitable like no-ip.com and dyndns.org and will do this FREE. The downside is YOU dont really own the domain name, they do but it depends, for an individual its not as critical to keep as a company So now you have a DNS server address, a route onto the internet backbone and stuff thats basically it. However you can do all this incrementally and in reverse.... First register a dynamic dns address, In other words as your ISP changes your public IP you have a daemon that updates it! They than update the secondary server which in turn updates the primaries. (it all sounds terribly MATRIX) Thus you can always ping www.roland.dyndns.org (or whatever) and it resolves to your IP. Then you install say apache.... apache accepts by default http requests, that is a request on port 80 ftp request go to port 21 ... telnet/ssh etc 23 etc etc. You can then set up a mail server. All a mail server does is listen on a port (110) to send mail and (I forget what SMTP is for sending) The rest, the internals of a mail prog are just really how it delivers it and authenticates. Same as apache, really. Start off with the dynamic IP add. iphitus is happy with no-ip and Im happy with dynamicdns.org You can also set up virtual servers.... That is mail.roland.dyndns.org but its not absoutely necassary. If not you have to adress mail to roland@www.dnydns.org instead of roland@mail.dyndns.org Go for it Roland!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland Posted February 6, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 thanks gowator :) I've found that it's quite easy to have a detailed doc about one aspect but difficult to have an overall view on the whole stuff. I think you did it. I will have a deeper look and perhaps some more question ? For the e-mail server and web server thing I think I'll go one day. For the isp thing, no way :D Just I was thinking about what you wish and don't find: a isp that provide only the connection. Well if more and more people run Linux, perhaps more and more people may want to host there web and e-mail themselves too ? so more and more people are going to ask for such isp. Generally when more and more people want something but don't find it there is money to earn :P Btw something I don't understand: You said before don't want to go to free.fr because of some doubt about the e-mail and web hosting reliability. But if your web and e-mail are hosted on your own box, why care ? IFAIK, the free's connection is reliable. by roland Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 (edited) NAh that was the question... is the connection reliable.... I don't care about the web/email.... The advantage of having your own email server is you can back it UP. .... (also set yuor own rules/max filesize etc.) The advantage of thwe web server is you just edit the files locally and its much quicker..... Change it and preview in browser.... You can follow links and dynamic stuff too. Its WAY easier than uploading .... edits::: I know what yuo mean, most of what I wrote is just scraps I put together....but Ive never really seen it explained!!!! I think anon is the guru..... Edited February 6, 2004 by Gowator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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