NetMAX Customer Stories

Cybernet NetMAX Simplifies Web Server Configuration for Music Introduction Service

440MUSIC.COM Connects New Bands with Alternative Music Listeners

After years of playing local venues, Tom Cramer, a former guitarist with Chicago rock and blues band, The Shifters , decided to hang up his guitar and utilize his technical expertise to help other musicians pursue their musical careers through the Internet. In 1998, he founded 440MUSIC.com, a non-commercial website and 24-hour Internet radio station designed to introduce the music of independent bands and singer-songwriters to a listening audience that likes to “get experimental” with music.

“Our listeners are typically young adults interested in seeking out the work of new and/or international artists who don't receive a lot of local air-play,” Cramer said. “440MUSIC helps expose bands to this audience, which is a critical first step for musicians pursuing a recording contract.”

Musicians provide Cramer with a CD of their music. He then scans the cover of the CD and codes one-and-a-half minutes of each original song on the CD for the Internet. The music is categorized on the website, enabling listeners to easily locate the type of music they're interested in and hear samples of the original cuts.

In creating the infrastructure for 440MUSIC.com, Cramer chose Cybernet's NetMAX line of Linux-based thin server/Internet appliance software for its proven ability to dramatically simplify Linux server configuration while delivering the full power of Red Hat OS, as well as its browser-based administration and pre-configured suite of applications. Challenged by a reading disability, Cramer needed a solution that would enable him to manage his own servers and save on administration costs, but which didn't require a lot of intensive reading or training to configure.

From Musician to Internet Expert

No longer feeling it his calling to “make it” as a musician, Tom Cramer put his music aside in 1987 and became a partner in his brother's job fair company. Cramer started out as a salesman, but as the computer became an increasingly important tool for the business his role began to evolve to that of self-taught systems administrator.

“I learned how to turn the computer on in 1992,” Cramer fondly recalled. “It took a lot of reading to figure out how things worked, and an excruciating amount of time due to my reading disability. But I eventually taught myself the ins and outs of a peer-to-peer system and have continued my computer self-education ever since. I'm always on the look out for ways I can make systems run better, faster, and more cost-effectively without having to do a lot of reading.”

In 1993, Cramer began talking with a computer-savvy friend about ways he could apply the computer skills and expertise he was acquiring to helping small businesses via the World Wide Web. Building and hosting websites for small companies was an idea that stuck. Cramer left the job fair business in 1998 and later that year launched a company called TECnet.

TECnet

TECnet is an Internet maintenance service business, which Cramer runs as a sole entrepreneur.

“My goal was to target small business owners who have respected businesses, but don't understand the Internet or how to create a website,” said Cramer. These businesses don't typically have the $70-80K to pay someone on staff to manage a website, either. So I started TECnet as a small hosting site providing both Internet and a Webmaster.”

In the beginning Cramer used an Internet Service Provider (ISP) for collocation of his server, and hosted the TECnet website himself. But cost soon became an issue.

“I was paying $300 a month for collocation of my server, and this only allowed me to host up to 20 IP addresses,” commented Cramer. “Beyond that initial 20, I was paying $1 per address per month. Technical support provided by the ISP was an additional cost, so all in all I was paying out $500-$600 per month. I needed to find a way to cut these costs.”

WebServer in an Orange Box

With collocation fees beginning to eat into TECnet's profit margin, Cramer started looking for ways to manage his own servers that did not require a lot of complicated pre-configuration reading.

“One day while perusing the software section in a retail store, I came across an orange box that said, “Web Server,” recalled Cramer. “I decided I wanted to try it and bought the software right off the shelf. This was NetMAX 3.0.”

Cybernet's NetMAX Professional 3.0 is a Linux-based thin server/Internet appliance in a box, designed to drastically simplify Linux server configuration and management while delivering the full power of Red Hat OS. The beauty of NetMAX, as Cramer discovered, is that a relatively unsophisticated user can set-up a NetMAX server in as little as 15 minutes with a few simple mouse clicks. And as a software-only solution, NetMAX gives users the flexibility to select whatever hardware best meets their needs.

“I took NetMAX back to my office, and within an hour-and-a-half of installing the software I'd created a web page on the NetMAX server, which I was able to view through Internet Explorer,” explained Cramer. “The system searched for the IP address using Internet protocols rather than network protocols.”

NetMAX uses custom configuration code, tight component integration, and an advanced graphical HTML interface to simplify Linux installation and management. In contrast to the typical Linux server, which requires significant technical depth and potentially several days of configuration and “tweaking” to set-up, NetMAX servers can be set up by anyone who can use a web browser… yet command-line access to the Linux OS is simply a mouse-click away. The NetMAX Professional includes email and FTP services.

“NetMAX has not only simplified configuration for me, it's simplified my self-training,” added Cramer. I have excellent examples to look at in configuration files and have learned, for example, how to custom configure the hypertext file. But I never have to do this. NetMAX does all the configuring itself.”

440MUSIC.com

Realizing that it would be difficult to build his TECnet business without examples, Cramer launched 440music.com in November 1998.

“I knew I wasn't meant to be a musician,” said Cramer, “but I was in a position to help other musicians gain exposure for their music through the Web, and I needed something to show potential TECnet customers. So I built a website that would serve as a free resource for getting musicians and listeners together.”

Today, Cramer is running NetMAX Professional 4.03 software, which provides integrated network security, Internet connectivity, and file and print sharing, to serve 500 international bands and up to 50,000 listeners per month.

“NetMAX puts me in control,” said Cramer. “People can access 440MUSIC.com and TECnet through the Internet, and I no longer need a systems administrator. I recently added email for a client, and didn't have to pay an outside service provider to do it. Soon I'll be adding Perl script to the 440 site, which will enable listeners to directly email musicians without revealing their email addresses, so the musicians' privacy is protected.”

NetMAX Personal Tutor

In June 2003, Cybernet announced the availability of the NetMAX Personal Tutor, an 80-minute video designed to answer the most common installation and interface questions concerning the NetMAX Professional 4.03 Internet appliance software. Because it is divided into specific topics, the video helps the viewer learn to do a specific task or accelerates a user's basic understanding of how to establish and maintain a Linux-based server. For small-and mid-size businesses, the NetMAX personal tutor offers a convenient, round-the-clock alternative to NetMAX technical support, normally only available during business hours.

Tom Cramer was one of the first customers to use the NetMAX personal tutor.

“I've always felt great about talking with NetMAX customer support representatives,” said Cramer. “They always go a step beyond and offer me more time than what I pay for. But the new NetMAX Personal Tutor is a resource that I can use over and over again, without incurring an additional cost. It has enabled me to better understand the firewall, routing, VPN and proxy capabilities of the NetMAX Professional 4.03 software, without having to do any reading and without incurring ongoing technical support costs.”

The Right Choice

“In seeking the ability to manage my own servers I looked at Mandrake, Red Hat and Turbo Linux,” said Cramer. “But NetMAX was the right choice. It has helped me so much that I'm doing things I could never have done without it. It has more than exceeded my expectations.”

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