ClarkNet

ClarkNet was an ISP (Internet Service Provider) located in Ellicott City, Maryland that began operation in April, 1993. It was the first ISP local to the Baltimore area and the second ISP in Maryland.

The companies incorporated name was Clark Internet Services, Inc. and the service was called ClarkNet. It was founded by Jamie Clark, son of Maryland State Senator James Clark, in April 1993. It was located on the Clark family farm next to Columbia, Maryland and initially operated out of a working cow barn. Jamie Clark is deaf and most of the early employees were also deaf. As the company grew the offices moved to Columbia and the data center remained at the barn.

ClarkNet was a pioneer in many areas. It was the first ISP to provide dial-up TCP/IP access targeted for the home user in the Mid Atlantic region. It was one of the first web servers in the world, listed among the first 100 web servers in existence and one of the first in the country to offer free web pages to its customers. It was the first ISP to provide local dial in access numbers to all of Baltimore. It was the second ISP to form in Maryland. It was the countries first (only?) deaf owned and operated ISP. It pioneered the use of "Centrex ISDN" which is a 24x7 dedicated flat-rate ISDN line. It was for a time the top ten root Usenet server.

ClarkNet enjoyed a great deal of press exposure because of its early entry into the Internet, the fact it was a deaf owned company, and its excellent reputation for service. Washington, DC area institutions used ClarkNet as their first exposure to the Internet which included, among many others: NPR (National Public Radio), The Washington Post. Jamie Clark was interviewed and pictured in Fortune Magazine and had a spot on NPR. ClarkNet was the largest dial-up provider in the Baltimore/Washington area for a time. It won awards such as Small Business Administration awards.

The company employed up to 80 people at its largest. There were four primary teams: Engineering, Sales, Web development, Accounting.

ClarkNet was bought by Verio in 1998 but retained a large degree of local autonomy and continued to grow. Verio was sold to NTT in 2000 by which time the product focus had shifted away from dial-up and dedicated Internet access to web hosting and most of the original ClarkNet staff and products and network were dismantled or sold over the 2000-2003 period.