ORXNet has derived from an initiative among several computer hobbyists who wanted to explore the possibilities of a data sharing network. It is situated in a former hospital, with 250 home units. We started the initial BNC network (partially donated by the local University) in spring 1998. The network slowly grew larger, but mainly had gaming and music sharing as its reason for existence. As soon as ADSL was made possible in our neighborhood (late 2001) a pilot was started to share this connection with the network members.

Technical policies developt and the "networkers", as they called themselves, decided to choose solely Open Source software for all server computers. After the initial Internet connection (the KPN-Nokia pilot) became a reliable one (thanks to our ISP, Xs4all) the network grew fast. ORXNet as of today consists of just about 280 nodes and +200 users. Since late 2006 we are connected with a 25 Mbit glass fiber line. In December 2007 we realized a full scale WiFi network with Access Points located throughout the building and a freeRadius server for authentication.
Our future projects include VOIP, Gigabit LAN, and VPN connectivity with business or peer LANs.

The network has grown from a test site of 5 computers to the equivalent of a medium sized business network. We founded our organization as an official association (in Dutch: "Vereniging ORXNet") to decentralize legal responsibilities. ORXNet today has a setup that includes: bandwidth control, P2P activity monitoring, a DMZ, an in-house webserver, an accounting application, a local LAN, several wiki / discussion forums and a central documentation platform.