Continuing Service Excellence Since 1993

July 1993

• North Shore Access signs up its first customer, a UNIX shell account. Also offered are UUCP feeds. The service is running with a dedicated dial-up v.32bis connection to NEARnet (brought down each night to accept a batched UUCP news feed!)

March 1994

• North Shore Access introduces new SLIP/PPP service.

July 1994

• Network connection upgraded to a 256kb fractional-T1 to increase our network performance and handle expanded services.

March 1995

• North Shore Access expands its offices, doubling the floor space in the Woodbury Building in Lynn.

April 1995

• New central air conditioning system installed in the computer room - we're ready for more equipment installations!
• Sun SPARC20 system booted up for burn-in and development.
• North Shore Access expands its office space again, moving the customer service group into a newly-equipped 4 room suite (now occupying most of the 4th floor).

May 1995

• Northshore moved from the SPARC 2 to the SPARC 20. Big performance boost!
• /home mirrored to another 4GB disk.

June 1995

• Full dumps and maintenance moved to Sunday schedule.
• Sparky gets virtual IP interfaces, allowing customers to use URLs with just a host name (eg. http://www.mycompany.com.)
• Memory added to northshore making 192 MB RAM total. Northshore disks re-cabled for optimal configuration across dual SCSI controllers. Shore news spool mirrored to two 4GB fast/narrow disks and defective fast/wide hardware is removed.
• A second SPARC 20 model 61 arrives, with 256MB RAM and two FSBE Sbus cards. Another WWW and standby server is booted up, named "sparky", with 128 MB RAM and screaming fast.

October 1995

• Second computer room (the web farm) work completed: 60A for the Nynex rectifiers, lots of 20A receptacles for servers. 48 10BaseT Ethernet ports.
• The first customer server in the second computer room is installed: a colocated server (Mac).

November 1995

• Northshore (mailhost.shore.net, www.shore.net) upgraded to a dual-processor SPARC model 712. 32MB RAM added to shore (news.shore.net). The complete line-up of production servers:
  • northshore SPARC 20/712 dual CPU SuperSPARC 75MHz, 192 MB RAM, 17 GB disk
  • sparky SPARC 20/61, 160 MB RAM, 9 GB disk
  • sparkyjr Cycle 5 MicroSPARC II 100 MHz, 96 MB RAM, 8 GB disk
  • relay SPARC 20/61, 160 MB RAM, 8 GB disk
  • shore SPARC 2/Weitek upgrade, 128 MB RAM, 22 GB disk.

May 1996

• Shore.Net's new T-3 line goes into service at about 5 p.m. Equivalent to 28 T-1 lines, this connection effectively moves Shore.Net onto the backbone of the Internet. Shore.Net is the first local provider in New England to update to a T-3 connection.
• Shore.Net begins a partnership with the Daily Evening Item of Lynn, offering daily news and photographs from the community newspaper on its web site.

August 1996

• Shore.Net expands to a second floor at its Munroe Street home, giving customer support its own room.
• Shore.Net debuts a newly redesigned web site, with new community links and better navigation across the site.

April 1997

• Second T-3 to UUNet is in full use, giving Shore.Net two 45 mbps connections to the Internet backbone.

February 1998

• Shore.Net turns up the network in the new Oxford Street building, allowing first use of the new building. The first dedicated and colocated machines are moved in soon afterward.

April 1998

• Shore.Net holds ribbon-cutting ceremony for new Network Operations Center, officially opening the building.

September 1998

• Shore.Net moves to its new headquarters at 173 Oxford St.

August 1998

• Shore.Net goes statewide with local dial-up service. You can now get Shore.Net dial-up service with a local number anywhere in Massachusetts.
• Shore.Net begins offering SDSL service -- high-speed lines that use breakthrough DSL technology.
• Shore.Net begins selling NT Vhosts, along with the new NT Dedicated Server line-up.

October 1999

• Second colocation room opens at the new Network Operations Center.

November 1999

• Shore.Net receives $500,000 from the state’s Economic Stabilization Trust and the Lynn Economical Development and Industrial Corp. for the purpose of continuing its growth and hiring of highly skilled technical staff.

March 2000

• Shore.Net is purchased by Primus Telecommunications and soon becomes Primus Managed Hosting Solutions.

March 2009

• Shore.Net is purchased back by original founder Lowell Gray’s Pea Island Computing Corp.  The new Shore.Net will focus on colocation, server hosting services and cloud computing infrastructure supporting software professionals and their clients, as well as supporting its loyal Internet access customers.