The Equipment:

• IBM Netvista Pentium 4, 1.8 GHz
• 256 megs of RAM
• 21 in. IBM LCD Monitor
• Windows XP SP. 2
• Apache Web Server (WAMP Suite)
• Virtual Advanced 2.1
• VA-PHP 1.X
• VADV32

The Philosophy: 

• Asirta.com is a Networked Information Portal.  What is a NIP?  A N.I.P. is a Portal "like a small yahoo" which is networked to other  Portals taking advantage of Web 2.0 features and the networking power of old BBS systems. A N.I.P. can offer the same services as larger systems but can be easily maintained by an individual in one's own spare time. 

The Reality:

• Asirta.com officially started on 1 January 2007. 

• The site receives around 300 unique visitors a month.

• Some services include:  Internet E-mail, IRC chat, online games, message bases, file downloads, as well as up-to-date news on various topics.  Also, the Potal is accessible by older protocols such as telnet. 

• All this is done on a suite of software which takes up no more than 30 megabytes of disk space on a normal home computer.

• If you are interested in running your own NIP system, go to www.vadvbbs.com to download the software.