Here's a summary of what we do -- it's long, and that's because we
have not yet found a good way to describe the co-op in brief terms,
alas.  We are vast; we contain multitudes.

The Co-op:
We currently offer colocation with fixed or burstable bandwidth
at a speed of your choosing (instead of the X megabytes per month model).
Our systems are colocated with Cogent with Ethernet connectivity.
Everything is geared to grow to ensure that we don't oversell our
connection... ever (this and similar issues with other area ISPs is why
we started the co-op).  As a member, the co-op will secondary DNS for
you (and even front DNS as primary for you if you don't want your
system's nameservice visited by the outside world), delegate a subdomain
to you if you don't have a domain, and give you control of your inverse
DNS records (either via direct delegation or via the method described in
rfc2317, which is really easy to implement and requires no special
software).

We never have less bandwidth to our upstream (Cogent) than the aggregate
total of our entire membership at burst.  I.e., we never oversell, not
even a little.

We're a real (Illinois incorporated not-for-profit, federal 501(c)(12)
tax-exempt organization) co-op, so pricing is falling regularly as our
consolidated buying power and membership grows.  That userbase is mostly
computer (tech, law, and security) professionals at present, plus some
companies: including a non-profit web site (a very busy one, indeed),
and web hosting providers.

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Here's a blurb from our member tech documentation:
 
DNS:

We'll secondary your DNS zones. In fact, you can tell the world we're
primary if you want, just so long as you run your own mini DNS server from
which our server can refresh your zones.

Even if your name server can't take direct delegation of blocks smaller
than a full class-C, you can control your own INVERSE DNS (number->name).
Just pick one of your domains, and set up entries for each of your IPs;
so if you have xxx.xxx.xxx.32/29 you could set up in your mydomain.com
zone:

     33 IN PTR mypc.mydomain.com.
     34 IN PTR mymac.mydomain.com.
     35 IN PTR myymp.mydomain.com.
     36 IN PTR mycisco.mydomain.com.

...we'll do the rest. 

If you have no domain, you CAN HAVE one from us! We're happy to delegate
subdomains based on your login.  So, if your login is "plonk" -- you can
have *.plonk.ispfh.org to play with.  Mail will be MX'd under your
control, CNAMES yours to decide, number of names at your reasonable
discretion, etc. Of course, you do have to have a nameserver someplace to
handle it, even a mini one; see above.

ISPFH will also accomodate non-ISPFH-network nameservers for your domains,
eiher to feed them info (as a master server, though the zone still needs
to be under your control) or to get your zone info from them (instead of
from a machine on your ISPFH network).

If you want your own .com, .net or .org domain, you should plan on running
a name server on your systems, or you can purchase name service from any
of hundreds of providers around the world- but not from ISPFH; we'll
secondary and even act as primary, but we'll have to read it from you.
You can use a simple freeware MS or *NIX domain name service program if
you want to be "primary" but hidden from the world.

E-Mail:

If you prefer not to run yourlogin.ispfh.org as a subdomain, ISPFH can at
your direction MX yourlogin.ispfh.org to a mail server of your choosing. 
ISPFH will not, however, directly handle, MX, or forward your mail. You
should probably be happy about that.


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Pricing is about $0.07/kilobit/sec plus fixed costs of connectivity, plus
general overhead.  The latter two costs go down with each new member, 
while the former goes down with every connectivity milestone we pass
with our upstream (Cogent).  All connectivity is dedicated; all is made 
with the assurance that to the first hop out of our control, there is
always sufficient bandwidth to handle the entire membership at full burst.

So, for example, right now, a colocated server taking up 2 RU (3.5"
with 512Kb/s of bandwidth burstable to 1Mb/s for its dedicated use
and a /27 subnet (32 IPs, 30 usable) would cost the member approx $125/mo
and function as if it were on a dedicated Frac. T1 of its own.  256k/sec
at full usage represents 132,710 Megabytes per month (132GB), for those
of you used to the "bytes per month" pricing model. 

There is no cost for larger netblocks; one must merely demonstrate need
and the levels of usage called for by ARIN.

Our membership (one time buy-in) is $400 + $100 for the first 6 months
(whatever kind of connection you get), or $1000 once.  The buy-in is a
one-time thing.  The membership entitles you to a vote and a refund of
any excess at the year's end that is not rolled into infrastructure
improvements You become a part owner, so if the co-op ever dissolves, you
would receive part of the liquidation.

Membership is usually open, though once our rack space is full, we'll
begin a short waitlist for new members until we have about 40% commitment
on a new rack.  This helps save existing membership from bearing the
costs of unused capacity (which is the greater part of the overhead right
now).

Once you know what you want, you can join by sending the membership fee
(all at once or the first $400) to:

   The ISPFH CoOp
   106 Calendar Court #203
   La Grange, IL  60525

   attn: Membership


If that has not scared you away... 

      -Mike Scher, ISPFH Co-op President, 1999-present