My wife worked for the first public ISP for several years. My first job, still in college, was for a local ISP, eventually becoming the head of all technical operations. And my next job was at a major commercial ISP, one which leased POPs to AOL among other businesses.

Here’s how they worked, at a technical and business level:

‘Due diligence’ is the business terminology for taking care of details when you enter into a contract. Those details include very basic things like:

• does the seller exist?
• do they have a history of fraud?
• are they on a list of terrorist supporters? (yes, really)…