About UtahISPs.com

UtahISPs.com, also known as the Utah ISP List, began in 1994 as a grass-roots effort to assist the Utah Internet community by helping users make informed decisions about local Internet service providers. Throughout its history, the list has been maintained -- in one way or another -- by Doran Barton of Iodynamics. The list has been through several distinct phases.

Initially, the information you see on this site was contained in a text file that was posted periodically to various Utah newsgroups. The obvious disadvantage of this strategy was that the information was only accessible to those who knew where to look.

This led to a second version, still with static content, but in a more accessible location: a web page. Having the content in a monolithic table still posed logistical problems, but it was publicly accessible to anyone who wanted to look at it. Doran still had to solicit ISP information and update the tables manually. The explosion of Internet use and service providers meant that, as more and more providers went online, more information had to be maintained.

The obvious solution was a database-driven site that allowed service providers to submit and maintain their own data. This was done with automated scripting, first using PHP and then with perl, that provided forms-based input of up-to-date information. Individual ISPs had clear motivation to provide accurate, reliable data. It was during this phase that UtahISPs.com experienced its biggest growth spurt.

The current phase is an ongoing effort to keep the service as useful as possible. With this latest revision of the code that drives the site, Iodynamics has performed a complete visual face lift on the site and much of its supplementary content. Other changes include more compact code, and the ability to deal more effectively with services such as DSL and wireless connectivity.

If you have further questions about the Utah ISP List, or about Iodynamics, please feel free to visit our corporate web site, or contact us directly.

Technical Information

This website conforms to the Iodynamics philosophy of using free and open source software combined with relatively inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware to do innovative things. For those who are interested, here are some technical specifications on the machinery and software that run this site:

Server hardware

• Processor: Athlon 1.7 gigahertz
• Memory: 512 megabytes

Server software

• Operating System: Red Hat Linux
• Web Server: Apache 1.3.x
• Database Software: PostgreSQL
• Scripting Protocols: Perl, mod_perl