In 1997 Demon was bought by Scottish Telecom, a wholly owned subsidiary of the private utility company ScottishPower. Scottish Telecom rebranded as Thus plc in October 1999 and floated on the London Stock Exchange. Thus plc fully demerged from ScottishPower in 2002. Thus became part of Cable & Wireless plc, and then part of Cable & Wireless Worldwide following a split of its parent. The company was purchased as part of the acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide by Vodafone Group on 27 July 2012. Demon then operated as a brand of Vodafone.
From 1996 to 2006 Demon operated a subsidiary ISP business in the Netherlands. It was sold to KPN in June 2006 and its operations transferred to their XS4ALL subsidiary.[3]
In January 2019, Vodafone announced its intention to close Demon and migrate its 15,000 remaining customers to more modern services.[4]
Demon Internet was born out of Demon Systems, a bespoke business software development company formed by Cliff Stanford, Grahame Davies and Owen Manderfield. In a discussion of the need for a home-oriented dialup IP service on the CIX boards, Stanford suggested that if 200 people stepped up with a year's subscription, he would use Demon's infrastructure to create such a service.
Dismissing the idea that the Demon name might upset those with religious convictions, Cliff Stanford laughingly said he had considered getting the numbers "666" incorporated in the dial up.
The original Demon service was hosted using mainly Apricot servers including a gigantic pair of LSI towers named "gate" and "post".
When Demon started, WinSock was still a new concept that was not widely available and MS-DOS users were generally expected to download Internet connection software based on the KA9Q implementation of TCP/IP.[5] Other platforms able to connect to the service included OS/2 Warp, Amiga, Archimedes, Atari, Linux and Mac. In 1995 the company acquired Chris Hall and Richard Clayton's Turnpike suite for Windows.
Its first service was the "standard dial-up" (SDU) - full TCP/IP access on a static IP address with a user chosen 4 to 8 character "nodename" (later 3–16 character "hostname") in the .demon.co.uk domain e.g. example.demon.co.uk. This allowed users to receive SMTP mail and other IP traffic direct to their computers. It was possible to operate independently of Demon or to make use of Demon's mail, news and IRC servers.
Demon was the first ISP to pioneer SDU service priced at £10 a month plus VAT (£10 only for the founder members), described in the sales literature as a "tenner a month". The low price attracted enough new customers that it was profitable and served to expand Internet usage in the UK.
Demon Internet received a healthy boost in user numbers when the UK Internet Book,[6] written by pioneering internet writer Sue Schofield, negotiated with Demon to include a discount coupon in the book for newcomers to Demon. The book needed a change to Demon's mail systems. Schofield demanded and got a POP3 mail option added to the Demon service. The book sold 15,000 copies [citation needed] of the first print run, many readers subscribing to Demon.
Thanks to Demon Systems, Demon Internet always had a strong programming team allowing it to create solutions to emerging issues in-house. All three directors were programmers and Stanford wrote many business-critical pieces of software, writing modules to adapt MMDF to Demon's purposes. Mark Turner, originally one of Demon System's developers, wrote many of the accounts and operational systems. As Stanford was increasingly absorbed with corporate activities, Neil McRae eventually took over the work on the mail system. Oliver Smith moved from Systems to Internet to automate services for internal and corporate customers, establish Demon as a technical leader in industry forums such as the RIPE,[7] DNS registry communities, e.g. .uk, and emerging open-source development communities[8] etc. Later Peter Galbavy was brought in to develop solutions for interoperability issues and Ronald Khoo developed low-level networking solutions that allowed the company to run on free operating systems and PC-based hardware.
Many other key Demon people started out as developers – Giles Todd, Clive Feather, Richard Clayton.
Armed with so many developers, many of whom made names for themselves within the developing industry, Stanford used the company's ability to contribute its developments to the open source community as a means of developing Demon's reputation beyond what its Internet service commanded.
Demon's home-dialup focus was also its Achilles heel. The company had some exposure after sponsoring Fulham F.C., but British Telecom were sceptical of Demon's projected growth and did not provide for expansion, resulting in a regular shortage of lines and regular re-digs of the top end of Hendon Lane, Finchley, north London to lay down additional cables. Demon moved initially to Energis lines with a Regionally Organised Modem Pool (ROMP) and later added Colt lines to the service so they had more control over which lines new customers used over separate 0845 numbers.
In 1995, Demon acquired a 25% stake in competing UK Internet provider Cityscape Internet Services, as part of a deal to move Cityscape's backbone from Pipex to Demon.[9] On 29 September, they acquired the remaining 75% of the company.[10]
Demon's early days are described in an interview with Cliff Stanford published in The Independenton 15 January 1996.[11]
The public telephone number of the company, and many of the dialup access numbers, end with 666 (the supposed Number of the Beast), a deliberate pun on the name Demon. When Thus plc was formed as a parent of Demon, its randomly allocated company number also ended in 666. Also, after a spate of "access" related names (e.g. gate, post) many of its original servers' hostnames started with dis, being the initial letters of Demon Internet Services as well as the name of a part of Hell in Dante's Inferno and another name for Lucifer.
This section needs expansionwith: details on the last decade of operations. You can help by adding to it. (July 2011)
Ownership
In June 2008 Cable & Wireless plc made a predatory offer for Demon's parent, Thus. On 1 October 2008, Cable & Wireless completed the takeover of Thus.
Cable & Wireless split into two separate businesses on 26 March 2010. Thus and Demon came under the ownership of the original business, which was renamed Cable & Wireless Worldwide. This was purchased by Vodafone in July 2012 which began integrating the business with its own. Thus and Demon were integrated into Vodafone on 1 April 2013.[12]
During 2016–2019, the Demon Internet service was slowly wound down with a view to migrating customers over to Vodafone branded products, a process that took longer than expected with some customers still being provided with Demon ADSL at the end of May 2019 due to a large backlog in the processing of migration requests.
IRC servers
Demon ran IRC servers on both the IRCnet and EFnet networks from 1993 and on QuakeNet later on. In 2009, Demon delinked their server from QuakeNet and EFnet.[13][14]
EFnet or Eris-Free network is a major Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network, with more than 35,000 users. It is the modern-day descendant of the original IRC network.
IRC is a text-based chat system for instant messaging. IRC is designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-on-one communication via private messages as well as chat and data transfer, including file sharing.
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides myriad services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privately owned.
Pipex was the United Kingdom's first commercial Internet service provider (ISP). It was formed in 1990 and helped to develop the ISP market in the UK. In 1992 it began operating a 64k transatlantic leased line and built a connection to the UK government's JANET network. One of its first customers was Demon Internet which popularised dial up modem based internet access in the UK. It was also one of the key players in the development of the London Internet Exchange through a meeting with BT in 1994.
In computer networking, Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) is a tunneling protocol used to support virtual private networks (VPNs) or as part of the delivery of services by ISPs. It uses encryption ('hiding') only for its own control messages, and does not provide any encryption or confidentiality of content by itself. Rather, it provides a tunnel for Layer 2, and the tunnel itself may be passed over a Layer 3 encryption protocol such as IPsec.
Deep packet inspection (DPI) is a type of data processing that inspects in detail the data being sent over a computer network, and may take actions such as alerting, blocking, re-routing, or logging it accordingly. Deep packet inspection is often used for baselining application behavior, analyzing network usage, troubleshooting network performance, ensuring that data is in the correct format, checking for malicious code, eavesdropping, and internet censorship, among other purposes. There are multiple headers for IP packets; network equipment only needs to use the first of these for normal operation, but use of the second header is normally considered to be shallow packet inspection despite this definition.
An IRCd, short for Internet Relay Chat daemon, is server software that implements the IRC protocol, enabling people to talk to each other via the Internet. It is distinct from an IRC bot that connects outbound to an IRC channel.
Thus was a telecommunications provider operating in the United Kingdom based in Glasgow, Scotland. The company was once listed on the London Stock Exchange and became a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless Worldwide (CWW). Following the acquisition of Cable & Wireless Worldwide by Vodafone in July 2012, the company was gradually integrated into Vodafone. This was completed on 1 April 2013.
Cable & Wireless plc was a British telecommunications company. In the mid-1980s, it became the first company in the UK to offer an alternative telephone service to British Telecom. The company later offered cable TV to its customers, but it sold its cable assets to NTL in 2000. It remained a significant player in the UK telecoms market and in certain overseas markets, especially in the former British colonies of the Caribbean, where it was formerly the monopoly incumbent. It was also the main supplier of communication in the British South Atlantic, including Saint Helena and the Falkland Islands. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
ClarkNet was an Internet service provider (ISP) located in Ellicott City, Maryland that began operation in April 1993. It was the first ISP local to the Baltimore area and the second ISP native to Maryland. Operations ceased during 2003.
Forward-confirmed reverse DNS (FCrDNS), also known as full-circle reverse DNS, double-reverse DNS, or iprev, is a networking parameter configuration in which a given IP address has both forward (name-to-address) and reverse (address-to-name) Domain Name System (DNS) entries that match each other. This is the standard configuration expected by the Internet standards supporting many DNS-reliant protocols. David Barr published an opinion in RFC 1912 (Informational) recommending it as best practice for DNS administrators, but there are no formal requirements for it codified within the DNS standard itself.
Plusnet plc is a British triple play internet service provider (ISP) providing broadband, landline and mobile services. The company was founded in 1997 in Sheffield, England, and became a public limited company (plc) in July 2004 when it was floated on the Alternative Investment Market. On 30 January 2007, Plusnet was acquired by BT Group, but it continues to operate as a separate business. By December 2013, it had over 750,000 customers across the UK.
Energis Communications Limited, briefly Telecom Electric, or more usually just Energis, was a 'technology driven communications company' based in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The company was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but subsequently went into administration, and then became a subsidiary of Cable & Wireless, in turn acquired by Vodafone.
TelstraClear Limited was New Zealand's second-largest telecommunications company before being acquired by Vodafone New Zealand in October 2012, previous to which it was a subsidiary of Australian company Telstra.
Eclipse Broadband, previously known as Eclipse Internet and Eclipse, is a UK provider of business technology services previously based in Exeter, Devon and Hull, East Yorkshire where it was owned by KCOM Group PLC. Eclipse supplies connectivity, cloud and communication services to support businesses. Its three product portfolios include ADSL, fibre and leased line broadband services; wide area networks as a managed service; backup, Lync, Hosted Exchange and data hosting services; and communication services, including both fixed line and IP-based voice. Eclipse Broadband is now a part of the Global 4 Group.
Opportunistic TLS refers to extensions in plain text communication protocols, which offer a way to upgrade a plain text connection to an encrypted connection instead of using a separate port for encrypted communication. Several protocols use a command named "STARTTLS" for this purpose. It is a form of opportunistic encryption and is primarily intended as a countermeasure to passive monitoring.
Internet access is widely available in New Zealand, with 94% of New Zealanders having access to the internet as of January 2021. It first became accessible to university students in the country in 1989. As of June 2018, there are 1,867,000 broadband connections, of which 1,524,000 are residential and 361,000 are business or government.
Internet in the Czech Republic and Internet access are largely provided by the private sector and is available in a variety of forms, using a variety of technologies, at a wide range of speeds and costs. In 2013, 68% of Czechs were connected to the Internet.From 2013 to 2022, the number of Internet users in the Czech Republic increased rapidly to 91.48%.
The prevalent means of connecting to the Internet in Germany is DSL, introduced by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. Other technologies such as Cable, FTTH and FTTB (fiber), Satellite, UMTS/HSDPA (mobile) and LTE are available as alternatives.
The United Kingdom has been involved with the Internet throughout its origins and development. The telecommunications infrastructure in the United Kingdom provides Internet access to homes and businesses mainly through fibre, cable, mobile and fixed wireless networks, with the UK's 140-year-old copper network, maintained by Openreach, set to be withdrawn by December 2025, although this has since been extended to 31st January 2027 in some areas due to reasons including panic alarms in sheltered housing needing a persistent connection which can't be guaranteed with internet-based DECT systems.
References
↑ "Obituary:Cliff Stanford". London: Daily Telegraph. 4 March 2022. p.31.
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