HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE USED BY THE TECH INFO INTERNET SYSTEM
(plus a few photos of the actual equipment down the bottom of this page)

The system you are connected to is operating from three "TECH INFO" built PC's housed in full tower cases.

Server1 is fitted with an Intel PII-400 CPU on a Giga-Byte 440BX 512kb cache motherboard, an Adaptec 2940 Ultra-Wide SCSI controller, a 9.1Gb Seagate Baracuda Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drive. It has 256Mb RAM fitted, and a Sony  SCSI DAT tape backup system. It runs the user authentication program, DNS service and is the main web server for all the domains which are hosted by TECH INFO. Tape backups are run automatically from this machine each night to ensure all e-mail messages are kept safe.

Server2 is fitted with an Intel P4-2400 800Mhz bus CPU on an Intel D845 motherboard, an Adaptec 2120S Ultra-Wide SCSI RAID controller, 2 x 36Gb Seagate Cheetah Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drives configured to mirror each other.
It has 1024Mb RAM fitted. This machine runs the newsgroup service and the e-mail service.

Server3 fitted with an Intel P4-2400 800Mhz bus CPU on an Intel D845 motherboard, an Adaptec 29320-R Ultra-Wide SCSI controller, 2 x 36Gb Seagate Cheetah Ultra-Wide SCSI hard drives configured to provide total proxy cache space of 72Gb. It has 1024Mb RAM fitted. This machine runs the proxy (cache) service to speed up response to your "www" requests. It also runs the spam filtering software 'mimedefang' and 'spam assassin' which is used to reduce the amount of unwanted garbage mail being received into our users e-mail accounts as well as controlling the flow of 'nasty' virus attachments on e-mails.

Servers 1 & 2 run on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server whilst Server 3 runs on FreeBSD V4.2
All equipment is connected via a Cisco Catalyst 2912XL 10/100Mb ethernet switch.

All of the analogue modems used by the TECH INFO dial-up service are Banksia 33,600bps units which are connected to Livingston PM-2E terminal servers. Our 56k modem system is based on two Bay Networks RAC8000 units containing 62 digital modems each. We use  Cisco routers to connect to the Net.

We currently have 30 'standard' PSTN (copper) dial-up lines installed and active at this time. These lines are connected to 30 x 33,600bps Banksia MyFastModems built into Banksia modem towers.
We also have 3 x Telstra OnRamp™ 30 and 1 x Telstra OnRamp™ 20 digital dial-in line services which are connected to our two Bay Networks 62 x 56k modem systems. Currently 110 of the 56k modems are functioning, leaving 10 modems still to be activated as required.
Our total number of active in-dial lines is therefore 30 x 33.6k plus 110 x 56k = 140 dial-in lines.

On 56k, we currently support both V.90 and k56flex modems.

We use and recommend  APC Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS systems) which provide backup power to all our servers, workstations, modems and routers.

Our up-stream connection to the Net is through Connect.com.au and Netspace Online Systems via a Telstra 640kbps DDS Fastway™ service. Both upstreams have large capacity lines all around Australia and to U.S.A. We also have a connection to the VIX peering exchange via a 10Mbps ethernet link This enables the larger (smarter?) internet providers in Melbourne to share information via their proxy servers thereby reducing the cost of traffic and speeding up the response to your requests for information.

The photo above shows the modem setup in our ISP network.
The Banksia modems (30 in total) are the black boxes on the shelves with the white stripes. They are connected to the Livingston unit - the large white box at the bottom of the cabinet.  The 56k modems (Bay Networks RAC8000 machines, each fitted with 62 modems) are all inside the two small light brown boxes in the right of the picture.

These are the three servers providing connectivity to the Internet. The left machine (server3)  is the Proxy server, the middle machine (server2) runs e-mail, newsgroups and secondary DNS functions, the right hand machine (server1) runs user authentication, DNS (Domain Name Service), domain web hosting and performs the nightly tape backups of the system. The extra fans on the front of the units are our own innovation and are necessary to keep the high speed SCSI hard drives cool.

This is the Telstra optical fibre cabinet bringing in the digital services to the ISP network.
We use this for the 56k dial-in lines and for the DDS Fastway service connecting us to the internet.