What is NEXT?

This computer is a time-sharing system primarily used for software development, research, service hosting for files, web pages, e-mails, printers, newsgroups, on-line chats, domain services, along with various general daily computing needs for its users. Other physical and virtual machines, apart from this one, also serve their own purposes, such as network infrastructure.

The overall shell project itself started on November 21, 2014, as a shell host simply called "server" (FQDN: server.attlocal.net). The laptop was picked to be used as the server here to keep costs at an absolute minimum, and because it's mouse and keyboard had issues making it difficult to use the computer as a laptop. The computer, however, excelled for a decade as a shared computer for shell accounts, web hosting, file/document storage, printing, and e-mailing. The laptop was decommissioned in 2024 once its hard drive finally became just read-only. Its data was able to be copied to a separate backup drive following its accurately-predicted death, putting an end to the disk's last few years of SMART tests showing "pre-fail" rather than just "self-test failed". The computer itself was disposed of since there was no need for most of its parts. Its RAM cards were removed, installed into other computers, and continue being used on small devices running Intranet services to this day.

The domain name gen.oh.us is administered by OARnet, a member of the Ohio Technology Consortium and a division of the Ohio Department of Higher Education. The next subdomain, and all subdomains under it, primarily serves as a home for a private shell server and network infrastructure. NEXT is independently owned and operated, and is not an official project, initiative, or division of either OARnet, the OTC, or the DHE.

• Personal home pages;
• Group home pages;
• How to browse NEXT;
• NEXT announcements;
• X-Clacks-Overhead;