Through InetDaemon.Com, InetDaemon has taught millions about computers, networking, the Internet, and telecommunications. InetDaemon is a Subject Matter Expert in the fields of telecommunications, network management and monitoring, systems administration, infrastructure architecture and leader with more than 17 years experience in the information technology industry.
InetDaemon has certified in Cisco, Sun and IBM technologies as well as ITSMF’s ITIL processes. Always a key decision-maker directing enterprise-wide technical, design and policy efforts InetDaemon leads companies to informed decisions that mate brilliant process with elegant design to produce results for his clients.
How InetDaemon.Com Started..
ORIGINAL RECIPE – Early 1995
The InetDaemon.Com site began as a personal web page stored in the personal web space of InetDaemon’s AOL employee account. InetDaemon created this site while working as a dial-up Internet support technician and software tester at AOL. His web site was so small and unknown that not even the Wayback Machine has a record of it now. That AOL account has long since been closed and the web pages it contained have been consigned to the great bit bucket in the sky. The old website began as an experiment where InetDaemon began cutting his teeth on HTML and JavaScript. The first version of InetDaemon.Com consisted of the same thing everyone else puts on their personal web sites: hobbies, interests, rants and raves–and his first short tutorial in HTML.
It was during this period that InetDaemon figured out that AOL was just an Internet access provider and not truly part of the backbone of the Internet. At that time (mid 90’s), AOL was strictly a “Tier 3” provider–they only provided Internet access to desktop computer users and only via dial-up modems. AOL was not, and never has been the center of the Internet universe.
While working for AOL, InetDaemon started searching the Internet for information about the Internet and found a lot of useful sites (InetDaemon’s bookmarks file is measured in megabytes). Back then, bookmark files were important. It took a lot of effort to find good, accurate and useful information and sometimes you found it by stumbling across it, not from a search, finding it a second time was nearly impossible. InetDaemon collected bookmarks and then put web pages together so that his bookmarks were accessible from any computer where there was an Internet connection. This also helped him organize the information into a usable format. The problem is that the Internet keeps changing and sites come and go (well, some do, InetDaemon.Com has been around since 1999!)
CRISPY – Late 1995
Working phone support can be difficult. You need to get the customer on the same page and that’s not always easy. Often, the fix for their connectivity problem requires disconnecting from AOL to call technical support. Back then, you phoned in, waited on hold, explained your problem to the technician and then hung up to give the fix a try (most people had just one phone line back then). If that didn’t work, you had get back on the phone with AOL technical support, wait on hold, explain the problem again to another technician, hang-up and test the next fix. If the provided fix didn’t work, you had to repeat the process.
It occurred to InetDaemon that web pages can be printed. If you can get a user online somewhere else, you can get them the instructions they need. They can print those instructions and use them to get back online. Also, AOL users could be directed to a page which contained a fix for an AOL software problem (such as the infamous cache-corruption problem in AOL for Mac 2.7, or the trick for identifying and disabling rogue third party Extensions and Control Panels) . With a printed copy of detailed instructions in hand (usually with lots of screenshots) the user could correct the problem themselves without additional calls to AOL technical support. InetDaemon was doing this long before most companies were even considering building support web sites (circa 1995).
Late in his career at AOL, he discovered the entire department’s workload dropping off in a rather dramatic and frightening manner. He began spending 12, 16 even 20 hours a day in the office surfing the world wide web for tutorials on basic theory (binary, circuit gates, OSI Model, network topologies, Ethernet) telecommunications (T1’s, DS3’s, OC3’s, Frame Relay, SONET), Internet (TCP/IP, Subnetting, Routing) and other technologies. Frequently he would surf at his desk late, late into the night. Often the morning shift would find him still at his desk when they came in the next day. Finding these tutorials wasn’t easy. Most search engines were very rudimentary back then and InetDaemon got very good with search engines. InetDaemon soon learned that every website author writes with a different style and every website covers topics in different and not always compatible ways. InetDaemon figured that placing all the information on one website and integrating the information would save others a great deal of time and effort. Assembling and checking that information would guarantee that InetDaemon knew the material thoroughly.
When the layoffs came, as they inevitably do at AOL, InetDaemon was better prepared than he might have been otherwise. He attended a job fair where he met a Sprint Supervisor by the name of Steve Miller (NO! really.. but not that Steve Miller). The job fair screening went something like this:
Steve: “What’s a T1?”
InetDaemon: “A dedicated serial connection with up to 1.544 Mbps speed and 24 time-slots running at 53 or 64kbps each depending on whether you’re using AMI or B8ZS.”
Steve: “I must have interviewed dozens of MCSE’s today and not one of them could tell me what a T1 is… Can you come back for a second interview?”
And with that, InetDaemon was in the Internet Backbone biz.
EXTRA CRISPY – 1997
InetDaemon moved on from AOL to Sprint’s Internet Service center. He discovered how ridiculously easy it was to register a DNS domain and to set up and maintain a web site so he registered InetDaemon.Com (back when Network Solutions was the only game in town), found a hosting provider and voila! The current InetDaemon.Com site was born (circa October 1997).
As often occurs, people with limited technical knowledge run through all the repair procedures they know and if fail and the problem still exists, the problem is automatically someone else’s fault. This is how the telecoms get into the blame game. Because their technicians don’t have the technical knowledge to actually find the problem themselves or the experience to recognize the problem, the only avenue left to them is to blame someone else. Once InetDaemon discovered how common this finger-pointing was between the inter-exchange carriers, the local carriers and the baby Bells, he decided that something should be done.
The next version of the InetDaemon.Com site started as a polite way of anonymously telling someone they are lacking in critical knowledge and skills. You can’t present a diagnostic which clearly identifies the problem to someone who hasn’t a clue what the diagnostic tool does or what the output from the tool means. Posting pages with a tutorial on the technology, a tutorial on simple diagnostic tools like ping and trace, and a tutorial of the interpretation of the output went a long way towards resolving outages on other networks and getting tickets closed.
However, InetDaemon also realized that if he could learn this stuff and improve his life, so could others; especially if they are given a little guidance. Since that time, InetDaemon has dedicated a large percentage of his personal time building this site and answering questions from the users of InetDaemon.com.
Once InetDaemon got this site off the ground, he found that he enjoyed helping others to learn about Theory, Computers, Internet, LAN, WAN, WWW, Telecommunications, Satellite and Security. He also found himself answering the same questions over and over again. InetDaemon didn’t have time to answer each questions in the depth and detail they deserve so he decided that his web site would be a great way to provide that information in a format that let the student start slow and dig as deep into the information as they desired. The more questions InetDaemon received, the larger the site became.
THE WHOLE ENTERPRISE
InetDaemon.Com Enterprises is a non-entity. It’s InetDaemon’s attempt to poke a little fun at the corporations who often are a little pretentious about their web sites. Unfortunately, it seems to have backfired on the ‘Daemon and now SPAMmers and B2B marketers seem to think we are a business, trying to sell us logos and web site design and various enhancement and enlargement schemes that have nothing to do with business.
InetDaemon.Com currently doesn’t provide consulting or services of any kind; “we” have no products to sell; “we” aren’t a business or corporation and “we” make no money off this site. In fact, “we” is just Himself the ‘Daemon.
Of course, if someone is interested in a site that pulls over 38,445,009 hits per year and showing InetDaemon a legitimate way to become independently wealthy, we’re listening…
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