Who should attend: ISP managers and experienced system administrators.

What you will learn: Typical pitfalls and problems faced by ISPs and how to avoid or solve them.

An ISP environment provides some specific challenges to system administrators. The user community is highly dynamic and demand ing, the security vulnerability is aggres sively chal lenged, and the growth rate is astronomical. We will provide tips to meet these challenges specific to ISPs. We'll discuss typical pitfalls in problems faced by ISPs and how they can be best avoided or solved.

Topics include:

- Account management
- Customer service
- Product/service planning
- Security
- Usage tracking
- Billing data integration
- Reliability and redundancy
- Performance
- Resource availability
- Working with the phone company
- Training or hiring talent

Barb Dijker is a system and network consultant with her own company, Labyrinth Computer Services. She is also the current saver of USENIX faces, the executive director and co-founder of the Colorado Internet Cooperative Association, and principal manager of an ISP called NeTrack.

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