Public IP Services was first conceived by me, Scott Tully, in the summer of 2003 as an ISP/Free WiFi provider. Going back a few months further, back in the Spring of 2003, is when I first got motivated to do something with WiFi. I was looking for something to occupy my creativity when I stumbled on to WiFi. At the time I was working in the Transportation industry and saw a lot of potential for truck drivers, and those who need to interact with truckers to benefit from WiFi access. So I dug a little deeper into WiFi and the business of providing WiFi access.

After researching and thinking of WiFi usage in real terms, I decided that providing free WiFi access would be the way to go. It didn't really seem like WiFi as a standalone service would work in many places. It was those places that I would target to provide them with a way to provide free internet access to their visitors.

So how would I make a business based on providing a free service? I thought by combining Internet service with providing free WiFi access that I could generate a little revenue by re-selling DSL. So I partnered with Covad, and New Edge Networks to re-sell DSL. For a WiFi system, I first experimented with Sputnik (i was a beta tester), but that was way to unstable. Bought an Orinoco AP-2500, didn't like that either. Then I hooked up with Netopia and made a deal to test their new AP with firmware that would provide a homepage redirect. It was a done deal. We had press releases, the whole 9 yards. I based my system design on what they had told me the AP would be capable of. Weeks turned into months and in December of 2003 I stopped waiting. Netopia screwed me. I was crushed. I wasted so much time and energy just to get blown-off. I know a few other guys tried to follow in my footsteps, but things did not work out for them either, just more empty promises from Netopia.

While Netopia was jerking me around I had read a little about NoCat but I really didn't have the time to play with it. Well now I did. It was Christmas vacation 2003 and I got Nocat installed and working on a spare Linux box. It wasn't exactly a simple install. I was looking for a way to make a simple NoCat distro when I found Morphix. Within a few days or maybe a week I had NoCat running on Morphix and the current day Public IP was born.

Since I first got NoCat to run on Morphix, the control server has undergone a few major revisions. You can find more details on the history and growth of Public IP and Zone Control in my blog. All the revisions and features included in Zone Control and the zoneCD are based on feedback provided by users of the system. If you have any request for features please send them to me and I'll do what I can to incorporate features that will make Public IP what you need it to be.

As always…

HAVE FUN!!
Scott