Demon Internet

Demon Internet is a British Internet Account Provider. It was one of the UK's ancient ISPs, abnormally targeting the "dialup" audience. It started on 1 June 1992 from an abstraction acquaint on CIX by Cliff Stanford of Demon Systems Ltd. The annex in the Netherlands started in 1996, and was awash to KPN in June 2006, its operations getting taken over by their XS4ALL subsidiary.1 The business was financed aboriginal on by Internet avant-garde David Tabizel of Durlacher and accustomed abundant abetment from Apax Partners.2

In the aboriginal canicule MS-DOS users were accepted to download Internet affiliation software based on the KA9Q accomplishing of TCP/IP.3 Added platforms able to affix to the account included OS/2 Warp, Amiga, Archimedes, Atari, Linux and Mac. In 1995 the aggregation acquired Chris Hall and Richard Clayton's Turnpike apartment for Windows.

Its aboriginal account was the "standard dial-up" (SDU) - abounding TCP/IP admission on a changeless IP abode acceptance users to accept SMTP mail and added IP cartage absolute to their computers. It was accessible to accomplish apart of Demon or to accomplish use of Demon's mail, news, IRC, servers.

Demon was the aboriginal ISP to avant-garde SDU account priced at £10 a ages additional VAT, declared in the sales abstract as a "tenner a month". The low amount admiring abundant new barter that it was assisting and served to aggrandize Internet acceptance in the UK. Demon still offers SDU account at the aforementioned amount today but abounding barter today use ADSL ("broadband").

Demon Internet accustomed a advantageous addition in user numbers if "The UK Internet Book" accounting by beat internet biographer Sue Schofield, adjourned with Demon in 1993/1994 to cover a abatement advertisement in the book for newcomers to Demon. The book bare a change to Demon's mail systems. Schofield accepted and got a POP3 mail advantage added to the Demon service. The book awash 15,000 copies off the aboriginal book run, abounding readers subscribing to Demon.

In 1998 Demon was bought by Scottish Telecom, a wholly endemic accessory of the clandestine account aggregation Scottish Power. Scottish Telecom rebranded as Thus plc in October 1999 and floated on the London Stock Exchange. Thus plc absolutely demerged from Scottish Power in 2002. Afterwards the auction of Demon Internet to Scottish Telecom Cliff Stanford founded the aggregation Redbus Investments.

The accessible blast amount of the company, and abounding of the dialup admission numbers, end with 666 (the declared Amount of the Beast), a advised pun on the name Demon. If Thus plc was formed as a ancestor of Demon, its about allocated aggregation amount aswell concluded in 666. Also, afterwards a access of "access" accompanying names (e.g. gate, post) abounding of its aboriginal servers' hostnames started with dis, getting the antecedent belletrist of Demon Internet Services as able-bodied as the name of a allotment of Hell in Dante's Inferno and addition name for Lucifer.

Early days

Demon Internet was built-in of Demon Systems, a bespoke business software development aggregation formed by Cliff Stanford, Grahame Davies and Owen Manderfield. In a altercation of the charge for a home-oriented dialup IP account on the CIX boards, Stanford appropriate that if 200 humans stepped up with a year's subscription, he would use Demon's basement to actualize such a service.

The aboriginal Demon account was hosted application mainly Apricot servers including a gigantic brace of LSI building called "gate" and "post".

When Demon started, WinSock was still a new concept. Most PC users had to use "KA9Q" or "NOS" - a command band appearance applicant - to authorize their TCP/IP affiliation to use ftp, gopher, telnet, etc. The Worldwide Web had not yet arrived.

Thanks to Demon Systems, Demon Internet consistently had a able programming aggregation acceptance it to actualize solutions to arising issues in-house. All three admiral were programmers and Stanford wrote abounding business-critical pieces of software, autograph modules to acclimate MMDF to Demon's purposes. Mark Turner, originally one of Demon System's developers, wrote abounding of the accounts and operational systems. As Stanford was added captivated with accumulated activities, Neil McRae eventually took over the plan on the mail system. Oliver Smith confused from Systems to Internet to run and automate casework for accumulated customers. After on, Peter Galbavy was brought in to advance solutions for interoperability issues and Ronald Khoo developed low-level networking solutions that accustomed the aggregation to run on chargeless operating systems and PC-based hardware.

Many added key Demon humans started out as developers - Giles Todd, Clive Feather, Richard Clayton.

Armed with so abounding developers, abounding of whom fabricated names for themselves aural the developing industry, Stanford acclimated the company's adeptness to accord its developments to the Open Source association as a agency of developing Demon's acceptability above what its absolute Internet Account commanded.

Because the Internet was still a almost new phenomenon, the area of academics and geeks, Demon's home-dialup focus was aswell its Achilles heel. They had some acknowledgment afterwards allotment Fulham F.C., but British Telecom were actual sceptical of Demon's projected advance and did not accommodate for expansion, consistent in a approved curtailment of curve and approved redigs of the top end of Hendon Lane, Finchley, arctic London to lay down added cables. Demon confused initially to Energis curve with a Regionally Organised Modem Pool (ROMP) and after added COLT curve to the account so they had added ascendancy over which curve new barter acclimated over abstracted 0845 numbers.

Demon's aboriginal canicule are declared in an account with Cliff Stanford appear in The Independent on 15 January, 1996

Ownership by Cable & Wireless

In June 2008 Cable & Wireless made a predatory offer for Demon's parent, Thus. On 1 Oct 2008, Cable & Wireless completed the takeover of THUS. The company is now known as "THUS, a Cable & Wireless business", as for example in the title of their web site.5

IRC servers

Demon has run IRC servers on both the IRCnet and EFnet networks back 1993 and QuakeNet later. In 2009, Demon delinked their server from QuakeNet and EFnet.