My computing life began in 4th grade when I received for Christmas a pong game. The following year, I received an Intellivision video game system. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair ZX80 which used cassette tapes for software and storage, had 2k of ram, and no hard-disk of any kind. Ever since this first computer I have loved using computers and exploring what could be done with them to help in my parents businesses as well as how I could communicate beyond our local area.
After a short time, they brought home an Apple IIE. I had the most fun in my early years with this computer. It had 2 floppy drive bays and 64k of ram and a 300 baud modem with software that could make it communicate at 1200 baud. During this time, I ran several bulletin boards (BBS’s) and communicated with other computer users all over the country. I was enthralled with what computers could be manipulated to do and how they could help us to be more efficient and reachable.
Fast forward past many hockey games, high school, obtaining my private pilots license and a stint playing college hockey, I decided to join the US Army. Stationed for 2 years as an 11B (Infantryman) with the 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum located in upstate NY. During this time, we were deployed for Hurricane Andrew Relief in Homestead FL, and Somalia Africa for Operation Restore Hope.
After an honorable discharge, I returned to St. Norbert College in De Pere, WI, majoring in Business Administration. During this time, I was working for my father at his FBO (Fixed Based Operation) Executive Air, located at Austin Straubel International Airport, where we provided fueling services for the airlines, transient aircraft, charter air services, flight instruction, maintenance and various other aviation related activities. I once again got back into computers. This was the start of Windows 3.1 and the beginning of the Internet as we know it today. Initially text based websites used lynx to the first versions of Netscape. The college had a whopping 56k connection at the time.
The start of Netsonic was born when I decided I would start building and designing websites. I quickly realized that building sites wasn't what I loved. I loved the back-end. I had been hosting all of my customer sites with a new startup in Pittsburgh – whom to this day I have tremendous respect for – Pair Networks, which has grown to become a very significant player in the shared hosting segment. I decided that I could host my own websites on my own servers with the right connectivity and infrastructure. So, the start of Netsonic as a hosting provider was now born, with a single T1 line and 4 servers. Netsonic was initially located in my apartment, then another, we quickly outgrew the first 4 locations until we purchased and built out our current datacenter facility wholly owned by us.
As the years have passed, we continue to learn and advance our services to meet the needs of our customers. And as such, we love what we are doing. We love being on the back-end of the internet making sure the packets pass and the data flows. I am fortunate to work with some of the brightest not only in our industry but also in the business, for whom are the reason for our success.
I would personally like to thank each and every one of you for choosing us to provide your hosting needs!