The History of CS&T Inc.Past, Present, Future... CS&T currently owns two Internet Access Domains, Blacksfork.net and Hamsfork.net providing Wireless DSL, and Dial-Up Internet Access for the Lincoln and Uinta counties area of southwest Wyoming. We provide for the 877, 828, 782, 786, and 787 telephone service areas. This includes Bridger Valley, Diamondville, Frontier, Kemmerer, Lyman, Mountain View, Opal, Urie and surrounding areas. Computer Services and Training, Inc. is located in Diamondville, Wyoming. For those of you unfamiliar with our locale, the name "hamsfork.net" comes from the Hamsfork River, Blacksfork.net from the Blacksfork River, both which wind through our valleys binding our communities. Our StaffPresident is Kevin Kershner.
Kevin maintains and admins the domain systems as well as
consult, train and perform field service. PastThe Hamsfork.net system was purchased from a local competitor in June 1996. It consisted of a used terminal server, router and an old 486 Linux box running www, ftp, dns and mail serving about 90 customers via 8, 28.8 Kbps modems through a single 56.7 Kbps Frame Relay. The system was immediately upgraded to utilize 2, 56.7 Kbps Frame Relay lines and 33.6 Kbps dial in modems to provide higher speed for our customers. The entire system was relocated to a more secure location with improved phone line access. The domain name was then changed to hamsfork.net to provide a more community oriented name. Several hardware upgrades were implemented over the next year to accommodate the rapidly increasing customer base. New, more powerful servers were added and high density Remote Access Servers with internal modems eliminated the near constant trouble we had with the external modems. The dynamic DNS and Multiport PPP capability of the RAS were welcome enhancements which greatly simplified customer configuration and allows enhanced client speed though MPPP was not implemented until 10/1/98. On 10/1/98 we converted from the terrestrial 56.7 Kbps land lines of US West to a wireless satellite based system. Provided by Intellicom Inc., The T1+ System consisted of a two-way, asynchronous Satellite ground station which provided 2 Mbps download speed. Intellicom proved to be an Excellent business associate, their VSAT system was quite fast and reliable as well as being very cost effective. On 3/15/00 we installed The Hambone, our Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), to provide High Speed Access for home and business. The WLAN bypasses the troublesome and expensive Local Qwest Central Office to provide an Ethernet Speed (11Mbps) backbone without use of telephone lines. On 3/25/00 we shutdown the VSAT T1+ System and cut over to a Terrestrial T1 (1.544 Mbps) provided by Sprint. The Latency of the VSAT system was just too high as compared to the now affordable T1. The Blacksfork.net system was purchased from a local competitor on 11/1/2000. Blacksfork.net supports about 250 dialup and wireless clients. On 4/1/2001 we signed on Bridger Valley Electric Association, an ISP in Bridger Valley as a client and supported both blacksfork.net and bvea.net data services through the Urie POP for about 1 year. On 8/31/2002 BVEA decided to try it on their own. On 7/22/2001 we were selected and signed on as an Affiliate of US Online, The Nations Largest Network of Local Internet Service Providers. US Online offers National and Local Advertising, Nationwide Roaming, E-Mail Filtering and a number of other Portal Services which are sure to be invaluable to our clients. On 6/1/2005 we discontinued utilizing the services of US Online. They seemed to have gotten away from their core business and were trying to expand with some get rich quick scheme. This caused their web site to suffer, support was getting poorer and uptime was dropping. We set up a new site here locally and ceased the redirect. On 8/1/2004 we brought DSL Services into our area. After waiting several years for Qwest to update the Central Office in Kemmerer and finally after several months of delay past the original due date DSL has arrived. We currently can provide DSL Service in 7 states here in the west. Mail, WWW, FTP, and DNS services are provided by several CS&T Inc. Powerstar servers running Linux OS. Linux is distributed free over the Net and is currently the most popular Operating System used by ISP's. Use of this freely distributed software helps to reduce our expenses thus reduce our customers costs as well as to support the continued development of free software on the Internet. This software is also considerably more reliable than that of the competing Microsoft and in our years of operation have not seen a single system failure due to software or operating system problems. We also provide web site hosting services to our local customers for Commercial, Non-Profit, and Personal use. Customers can access their sites via FTP or Front Page Extensions. Being instructors of several local community college classes, in the fields of computers and the Internet, we also provide helpful tips for our customers use to help increase their productivity on the Internet. Our Wireless Broadband Service has proven to be very popular with our clients. We have several small to medium businesses and many home users connected to the Internet via Wireless Broadband. Our Wireless Routers have been a hit with our business clients to provide a low cost and secure connection for their internal LAN's. The Future...Who knows? The Internet is ever-changing. CS&T was the first Service Provider in Wyoming to provide Wireless Broadband Service. This has proven to be quite popular and we can barely keep up with customer demand for installations. Expansion is inevitable and we will be moving to provide service in other remote communities, like ours, which have poor and unreliable dial-up service due to ancient Local Central Office Telephone equipment. Our business is providing answers, we don't need to know "Where do you want to go today?" the fact is with CS&T 'You CAN Get There From Here!'We welcome any comments you may have concerning this site, your service, or our services. Please feel free to contact us at any time. © 2005 CS&T
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