"ZSD", three letters, no spaces and no full stops, is our trading name. It is derived from "Zomerlust Systems Design" a registered Close Corporation.

Zomerlust is the name of my mother's family's farm. It is in Constantia in Western Cape. That farm in turn was named after Zomerlust in Paarl. Today Zomerlust in Paarl is the home of a rather smart hotel.

It was my desire to be closer to my family that prompted me to relocate back to Cape Town and it was the name of the family farm which inspired the name ZSD.

ZSD is an Internet Service Providor:

• We are located in Claremont, Cape Town, South Africa.
• We have been in business since January 1997 and we are still under our original management.
• We are registered Close Corperation, wholly owned by our management.
• We hold a "Value Added Network Services" (VANS) licence, issued by the "Independent Communications Authority of South Africa" (ICASA).
• We are members of the South African "Internet Service Providers Associatiation" (ISPA).
• We have a Code of Conduct.
• We subscribe to the to the Code of Conduct of Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA), http://www.ispa.org.za/code .
• We have appointed ISPA as our agent for the purposes of receiving "take down notices" in terms of Section 75 of the South African Electronic Communications and Transactions Act (25 of 2002). If you wish to submit a notice regarding material hosted by ZSD in terms of this section of the ETC Act please contact:

  Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA)
  Address: PO Box 518, Noordwyk, 1687
  Telephone: +27 10 500 1200
  Email: complaints@ispa.org.za
  

We specialize in building and maintaining Linux based systems. We use the Linux operating system to provide e-mail, internet access and related systems for our clients.

We make use of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution for virtually all of our servers. We selected Debian back in 1996 due to the mature approach adopted by the Debian project volunteers at that time. Their open policies, attention to detail, bug tracking system and quality assurance program provided a foundation that we could rely on. However it was the advanced Debian package management system which clinched our support for the Debian project. The package management system allows the administrator to update any single component while the package management system will automatically upgrade all related and affected compoments. All customized settings are preserved. We have some servers which have been upgraded through 6 major releases of Debian without being rebuilt from scratch. Needless to say we have never felt the urge to change to an alternate distribution. While not being the fastest to release new versions of code, Debian provides one of the most stable Linux platforms for use in production environments. It is favoured by many ISP's world wide. Not withstanding its usefulness in server applications, the Debian distribution also offers a full graphic user interface and a wide selection of desktop applications.

While Debian GNU/Linux is at the heart of our services, many of our Customers are not aware of this and most of them know very little about Linux. Rather we provide a full service with telephonic and remote maintenance to allow our customers to enjoy the advantages of using an efficient, flexible Open Source operating system without spending years learning how it works.