AHNet ...

It was 1994 and the AVCC (Australian Vice Chancellors Committee) had decided their main role was education, not providing internet services to ISP's.

After many moons of discussion and negotitation the Commercial Arm of the Internet (originally called AARNET in Australia) was sold in a tender bid.

Telstra, the largest Telephone company in Australia (our only other phone company is Optus who at the time were still trying to find their feet) won the bidding and were required to meet certain targets.

Anyway to cut a very long story involving much of 1994 and lots of 1995 and a little of 1996 ... 

   ...  a Domain Name was needed for a private company that was going to target providing high speed, low cost internet to ISP's in AU.

Aftermuch thought, a Domain Name was selected, and as a bit of a play on phonetics, it was AHNET, pronounced 'ar - net'.

The licence to use the domain name was later withdrawn from the project by the owner, and so it was issued here for our use!

We have decided that AHNet isn't going to become a saleable product or part of commercial by products of the internet.  Instead the goal is to honour the true meaning of Internet - sharing of resource and development of technology.

We hope you can be part of our dream, as much as we are part of yours.

The fees charged for AHNet services go towards recoving the costs of operating Name Servers, Web Servers, SMTP Servers, Bandwidth (yes we kinda pay twice here - once for the media itself and then for the traffic in 1 Meg chunks ...) and a little towards the staff operating costs.

The Name Server services for example allow you a very very low cost PERMANENT location for your Domain Names.  You have full control over your domain data and can move service providers without worrying about whether your delegation is going to be done on time. A simple fax or email or even a phone call before your planned move and - Presto!   Your new IP Addresses are loaded!

It's the goal of the AHNet owners to make Internet accessible to everyone, for the lowest possible costs. So all funds go towards further development of both the immediate resources and future network plans.

We hope others will join us to produce a network environment suited to the future. Things like Voice and Data services are some of those dreams we, like many wish to reach.

AhNet is run by Adam and Suzanne Todd from Australia. You can go to their home pages to find our more about Adam or Suzanne.

Adam looks after all the technical business, such as designing networks, writing CGI's, making sure servers are operational, mirrors are fully functional and updated, and that the internet service works properly and to specification. Adam also does the final layout of pages before they are put online. He designs the network and carefully scrutinises the ISP's who are either providing services or joining the AHNet quest.

Suzanne looks after the Business Administration, financials, initial design of the pages, most of the graphics creation, the research for content, the spelling errors Adam frequently makes, and testing all the CGI's and FORMS to ensure they operate correctly.

You can use the feedback page to make suggestions or send us error reports. Without your help we can't fix problems, and not all are logged.