About OlaGrande.Net
Ola Grande Networks, Inc. was established on August 10, 2000. OlaGrande.Net started providing Unix shell access, added nationwide dialup, quickly grew it's user base, and expanded its services.
On September 1, 2005, Eskimo North began providing services for former OlaGrande.Net customers. Eskimo North significantly expanded existing OlaGrande.Net services while allowing existing OlaGrande.Net customers to retain their existing e-mail addresses and web sites.
There is a large base of Unix users who want access to a third party Unix shell provider. There are many reasons for this phenomenon:
- Security - Properly installing and maintaining a Unix system is hard work. Eskimo North does the work for you.
- Privacy - You can maintain an alternate "Net Identity" at Eskimo.Com/OlaGrande.Net so that the public does not know where you work, live, etc.
- Redundancy - You can test out your own corporate or home network from Eskimo.Com/OlaGrande.Net.
- Reliability - Our uptimes, availability, and performance are much higher than the typical ISP, cable, or phone company.
- Flexibility - At Eskimo.com/OlaGrande.Net, you have immediate access to many features and tools that take a very long time to find, configure, and install on your own personal system. Some of those tools may not even be available at your corporate site for various reasons.
Eskimo.com/OlaGrande.Net is more than just a Unix shell provider. We provide a complete set of services: from simple and inexpensive PPP or ASCII dialup accounts to full-blown Unix shell access. Our prices are very competitive, and our services are world class.
I started Eskimo North originally as a Computer Bulletin Board System running home brew software in 1982. In 1985, we grew to a multi-line Unix Timeshare service, and in 1991 just after the CIX was formed we started providing commercial Internet services.
Presently, Radio, Television, all the major press, is controlled by a handful of major corporations. The model they use for their media is what is known in the industry as a "push" model. What that means is that they own the content and push it to you. This means only their viewpoints are represented to any significant degree.
When the CIX was formed and it became possible to bring the Internet to the public, I saw a great opportunity to change all that and make media interactive so that everyone can originate content and everyone can express their viewpoint.
This is not the media that corporate America wants the Internet to be. They want the Internet to be something akin to a 10,000 channel cable-tv system where they can narrow-cast ads to a finely tuned market audience. Corporate America, wants the Internet to be yet another push media. And to that end they've designed major internet services around that goal. For example, most low cost consumer broadband access is asymmetrical with higher download speeds and slow upload speeds. This allows them to push their content to you rapidly but does not allow you to provide your content to others rapidly.
Those few mega-corporate providers that do provide you with some hosting capability, severely restrict both your content and the number of hits your pages can get before they deny access to them. This effectively prevents you from making your content and by extension your views, widely available.
In order to try to even the playing field, we provide robust web hosting for our customers without hits limits and with no page limit other than that imposed by a generous disk quota so that you can effectively make your content and by extension your views available to others. Further, we provide documentation to try to help you learn how to do this. The only restriction we place on content is those which are required by law. You will find all political viewpoints from the extreme left to the extreme right represented here.
For these reasons our services provide you with significant value even if you obtain your access to the Internet through another provider.