BISGNet started from humble beginnings in 1998 with the desire to provide web hosting and email for a local Church in Bristol. Based on a 64k leased line; (which was rather expensive at the time) our first experiences with the Linux LAMP were made. Back then, there were no real problems, with spam. There was the the occasional virus threat. We were all happy and comfortable with our Chief Architect happily working at Lucent Bell Labs with International Network and Network Management Design. Then it started in first in 2002 the rampant increase of Spam and server abuse, and the first plans for full TLS/SSL secured Internet hosting service were laid down to address the problem.

The BCISGNet Vision

In 2002 the Chief Architect got the call to dedicate full time to BCISGNet with the vision of taking the plans for full TLS/SSL secured Internet hosting service to the next stage of a generally available Service to the Christian Church, Mission, Ministry, and Charity community. The service would be a full fledged service based on Open Source, high availability, load balanced co-located servers and include Multimedia services (The carrier class telecoms design principles and influence was strong in the designs). Above all the service would be provided free of charge to the Christian Church, Mission, Ministry, and Charity community and paid for by sponsorship form the commercial work of in the field of Network/Service Architecture & Design Services by XSystems Consultants UK Ltd and the commercial TLS/SSL Secured Internet Hosting Services provided by XSecHosting.

The verse Matthew 10.8 was given regarding the project, quoting from the 'World English Bible':  Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers (TR adds ?, raise the dead?), and cast out demons. Freely you received, so freely give.

A virus leads to all kinds of sickness, and spam, like lepracy, infests the Internet. The dependency on software and systems vulnerable to the virus and spam is like a the thief stealing the resources and we all know which demon (... or Lord of) that is. The bit about 'raising the dead' can be left to the reader's imagination, as it was left out of the translation. To this end BCISGNet has added the advocacy and for the adoption of Open Source in the Christian Church, Mission, Ministry, and Charity community and the promotion of Linux Desktop, office and productivity tools, and open source multimedia (Photo, Audio and Video) technologies.

The BCISGNet Time Line

1998-2002	BCISGNet alpha	64K leased line to a small Bristol based CSP Slackware 8.0, Sendmail, and LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP)
2002	BCISGNet Beta	Upgrade128K leased Line Upgrade Slackware 8.1 and all software to latest versions Architecture and plans for a TLS/SSL secured Internet hosting service in response to increasing  Virus, malware and spam threats
2003-2004	BCISGNet Phase I	Upgrade Slackware 9.0 with Fully Secured TLS/SSL Internet hosting Services Added Clam AV, MIMEDefang and SpamAssassin,  Virus, Malware, and junk mail  detection and removal. Started beta testing with a few selected Ministries. Architectures for Phase II and III as a full Open Source based [TLS/SSL] Secured Internet Hosting Services for the Christian Church, Mission, Ministry, and Charity community.
2005	BCISGNet Phase II	co-located high bandwidth server upgrade OS to Slackware 10.0 all software and modules to the latest versions SquirrelMail Client UserMin control panel Postnuke Support and Services Portal 6 months testing on a high band width server
July 2005	BCISGNet is opened for business

The BCISGNet Vision, plans and road map
   

Phase IIb	MysQL (openLDAP) based automatic Service (re)configuration
Phase IIc	Extended Webmin/Usermin based System/user configuration
Phase IId	Service additions for Media Streaming (Helix, video lan etc) support
Phase III	Linux Virtual Services (LVS) High Availability (HA) and  Load Balanced Clusters. Geographic redundancy of DNS, Web Server and Email services MySQL Database High Availability Replication over Virtual Private Networks (VPN)

Please pray for our efforts in completing Phase II and III and in our efforts in the advocacy and promotion for the adoption of Open Source and the Linux Desktop, office and productivity tools, and open source multimedia (Photo, Audio and Video) technologies in the Christian Church, Mission, Ministry, and Charity community. Thank you.