ClarkNet was an

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privatel ...

(ISP) located in

Ellicott City, Maryland Ellicott City is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in, and the county seat of, Howard County, Maryland, Howard County, Maryland, United States. Part of the Baltimore metropolitan area, its population was 65,834 at the United ...

that began operation in April 1993. It was the first ISP local to the

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

area and the second ISP native to

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; ...

. Operations ceased during 2003. The company's incorporated name was Clark Internet Services, Inc., the service was called ClarkNet, and it operated under the

domain name A domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. ...

of clark.net. ClarkNet was founded by Jamie Clark, son of Maryland State Senator

James A. Clark James Clark Jr. (December 19, 1918 – August 18, 2006) was the president of the Maryland State Senate from 1979 to 1983. Biography Clark was born at Keewaydin Farm, Ellicott City, Maryland. His father, James Clark Sr. (1885–1955), was a ...

, in April 1993. It was located on the Clark family farm, located between

Clarksville, Maryland Clarksville is an unincorporated community in Howard County, Maryland; the second highest-earning county in the United States according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The community is named for William Clark, a farmer who owned much of the land on wh ...

and

Columbia, Maryland Columbia is a census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland, Howard County, Maryland. It is one of the principal communities of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. It is a planned community consisting of 10 self-contained villages ...

, and initially operated out of a working cow barn. Jamie Clark is

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

and most of the early employees were also deaf. As the company grew the offices moved to Columbia and the computer data center remained at the barn. ClarkNet was a pioneer in many areas. It was the first ISP to provide dial-up

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

access (via

SLIP Slip or SLIP may refer to: Science and technology Biology * Slip (fish), also known as Black Sole * Slip (horticulture), a small cutting of a plant as a specimen or for grafting * Muscle slip, a branching of a muscle, in anatomy Computing and ...

or PPP) targeted for the home user in the Mid Atlantic region. It was one of the first web servers in the world, listed by CERN as one of the first 100 web servers in existence and one of the first in the country to offer free web pages to its customers. It was the first ISP to provide local dial in access numbers to all of Baltimore, and many parts of Maryland. It was the second ISP native to Maryland. It was the country's first (only?) deaf owned and operated ISP. It pioneered the use of "

Centrex Centrex is a portmanteau of central exchange, a kind of telephone exchange. It provides functions similar to a PBX, but is provisioned with equipment owned by, and located at, the telephone company premises. Centrex service was first installed ...

ISDN" which is a 24x7 dedicated flat-rate

ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Wor ...

line. It hosted, for a time, one of the top ten root

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

servers. ClarkNet enjoyed a great deal of press exposure because of its early entry into the Internet, the fact it was a deaf-owned company, its unusual location on a working farm, and its excellent reputation for service.

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

area institutions used ClarkNet as their first exposure to the Internet which included, among many others:

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

(National Public Radio), SANS (the SANS Institute), and

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

. Jamie Clark was interviewed and pictured in Fortune Magazine and was the subject of a feature spot on NPR. ClarkNet was the largest dial-up provider in the Baltimore/Washington area for a time. It won several awards, such as

Small Business Administration The United States Small Business Administration (SBA) is an independent agency of the United States government that provides support to entrepreneurs and small businesses. The mission of the Small Business Administration is "to maintain and str ...

awards. The company employed up to 80 people at its largest. The company was structured with five primary teams: Engineering, Customer Service, Sales and Marketing, Web Development, Accounting, along with a senior management team and a board of directors. ClarkNet also rolled out a training curriculum for individuals and businesses to teach basic to advanced courses in web development and Internet research. Services provided included: Dialup TCP/IP; Dialup

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

access; Dedicated circuits such as ISDN, T1,

Frame Relay Frame Relay is a standardized wide area network (WAN) technology that specifies the physical and data link layers of digital telecommunications channels using a packet switching methodology. Originally designed for transport across Integrated ...

SMDS Switched Multi-megabit Data Service (SMDS) was a connectionless service used to connect LANs, MANs and WANs to exchange data, in early 1990s. In Europe, the service was known as Connectionless Broadband Data Service (CBDS). SMDS was specified ...

;

Web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...

;

Web development Web development is the work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain text to complex web application ...

; Colocation hosting. At its largest it had over 20,000 dialup customers and 2,000 dedicated customers. ClarkNet was purchased by

Verio Verio is a global web hosting provider headquartered in the United States. Incorporated in 1996 in Denver, Colorado, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Communications, which acquired the company in 2000. Ve ...

in late 1997 but retained a large degree of local autonomy and continued to grow under the Verio brand with many of the original ClarkNet employees in place. Verio was sold to NTT in 2000 by which time the product focus had shifted away from dial-up and dedicated Internet access to web hosting and most of the original ClarkNet staff, products and network were let-go, dismantled or sold (respectively) over the 2000-2003 period. The barn on the Clark farm where ClarkNet started burned down in an accident on November 15, 2004, although the company was no longer in existence nor being used by Verio at the time.

External links

*Sullivan, Kevin
"Interface Among Equals; Deaf Man Sees Vocation in Computer System."
''The Washington Post,'' September 14, 1993 *, from a December 1996 ClarkNet home-page. *Glasser, Jeff

''The Washington Post,'' August 12, 1996 *Gately, Gary
"Denver firm buys into ClarkNet Columbia Internet service to expand"
''

The Baltimore Sun ''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries. Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...

'', October 21, 1997 via Wayback Machine *Rogers, John
"ClarkNet Is Purchased By Verio, Colorado-based Internet Services Provider."
''The Business Monthly,'' November 1997 via Wayback Machine *

Johns Hopkins University, background about Jamie Clark and ClarkNet via Wayback Machine

Interview with CEO Drew Clark in 1999 via Wayback Machine {{DEFAULTSORT:Clarknet Internet service providers of the United States Defunct Internet service providers Defunct companies based in Maryland Internet properties established in 1993

See also

External links