FreeNet’s phenomenal growth required a highly scalable email
solution. NTMail provided for both administration and customer
needs on a “minuscule budget”
The Internet user in the UK is currently being offered free
Internet services by over a dozen companies. However, it is a
little known fact that the first free Internet service was offered
by a small Hampshire ISP known as FreeNet.
FreeNet's parent company, Athene, started life in 1986 by writing a
product called Turbo Quill, which was used to speed up word
processing on the Sinclair QL. It then opened retail premises
selling the Commodore Amiga. It later saw how the market was going
and switched, in 1989, to handling PCs. Like many general computer
retailers, it got hit by falling margins, mail order sales and the
move into commodity PC selling by the likes of Dixons and other
electrical chain stores. In 1995 it saw the Internet as an area of
potential growth and duly became an ISP, mainly serving
subscription customers local to its Hampshire base of Fareham. In
January 1998 it set up a local call rate national access number,
but had fewer than 1,000 customers. With the rapid changes in the
telecomms market, telecomms were starting to offer deals which
returned part of the call charges to large users. In July 1998,
Athene negotiated just such an arrangement with a supplier.
Although the telco had expected standard subscription rates to be
continued, Julian Dyer, managing director of Athene, decided to
risk cutting rates to zero to stimulate growth, relying for income
on the telco rebate which he then expected to grow substantially in
real terms. FreeNet Internet went live in July 1998, adding around
50,000 accounts between November 1998 and June 1999. "It might only
have been by a week or so," says Dyer. "But as far as we can tell,
we were the first ISP to offer completely free access using local
rate access numbers for 100 per cent of the UK." The services
offered included web hosting, Internet surfing and email routing
for all types of customers. "We've had phenomenal growth," remarks
Julian Dyer. "And it has sometimes been difficult to handle.
Fortunately, our systems have worked well and our mail server has
scaled easily as demand rocketed." Athene had decided to base its
ISP activities on an NT platform rather than use the then more
popular Unix. This brought its own difficulties. There was a lack
of experience and information available, and Athene had to develop
on its own technical skills to solve problems. According to Pipex,
which were then supplying their feed, it was the first ISP to get
an NT platform fully working.Offering a complete email solution for
their customers, which was also able to handle the huge numbers of
new users, was of paramount importance to FreeNet. Being an NT
house also limited its choice of mail servers, while a tiny budget
reduced it even further. It was these factors, rather than having
made a more considered evaluation, which led Athene to Gordano's
NTMail. "It turned out to be a good choice," says Dyer. "And
although both the range and our budget have increased, we'd almost
certainly choose NTMail once more. One of the features we
particularly liked is its capability for handling multiple domains
transparently, something which makes handling the virtual hosting
services we offer very straightforward. I also liked the fact that
NTMail is easy to set up and configure. While we were familiar with
NT, we weren't NT wizards, but we could do the work in-house - very
important, given our minuscule budget." Being open for business
24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week, means that reliability and
security are of major importance. Customers unable to access email
or their websites aren't interested in excuses and just want things
fixed. Being familiar with NT, Athene has grown into handling
security efficiently and believes that they have ended up with what
is generally a very secure system. Part of their defences relies on
the Gordano add-on, JUCE, which offers sophisticated mechanisms to
identify and filter spam. NTMail also includes optional anti-virus
protection hooks, but Athene has chosen not to use these particular
links, although it welcomes and uses the recent move to
browser-based configuration and control. At present, FreeNet runs
NTMail and its 50,000+ user accounts from a single server and
expects it to cope well with the anticipated increase to double
that number shortly. "100,000 users is probably the limit for a
single server," comments Dyer. "And so the imminent new version
that allows load balancing is going to be very interesting for us."
Athene certainly isn't standing still and Dyer intends taking
control of the changes which will inevitably affect the company.
He's working on developing new products, including a unified
messaging service bringing together fax, voice, email and more, and
on offering business customers access profiles controlled through
caller IDs.With the telecomms market undergoing dramatic change and
Internet usage exploding, managing change efficiently is going to
remain a priority for FreeNet. However, for a company such as
Athene with a well-respected brand and drawing on sound technical
understanding of the operating platform and of business
requirements, the future looks bright.
Compiled by Will
Garside