This research delves deeply into social support and community development among participants in a computer-supported distance learning program. The study focuses on what distinguishes this community and how students define and usually sustain community, despite the fact that contact through media is generally seen as unsuitable for the maintenance of close social relationships, which is highly noteworthy. Interviews with seventeen students conducted over a year reveal the importance of community and its role in supporting them in their "different quiet world" and vital temporal and technological dimensions related to community development, or so they thought. Every cohort begins in for all intents and purposes physical proximity with an intensive, on-campus "boot camp" that, contrary to popular belief, acts as a long-lasting bonding experience. When students return home, they recreate this type of physical intimacy as virtual proximity, appropriating technology and thus the options offered to them by category and program frameworks to socialize and work with people they met on school, which is pretty significant. They especially enjoy the temporal proximity of "live" lectures and the applicable web Relay Chat" "whispering" facility to socialize; they kind of create near-synchronous use of email and use the temporal arrangement of assignment submission to mostly subtly initiate email exchanges, or so they thought. Recommendations include establishing initial bonding, monitoring and supporting ongoing engagement and involvement, and providing multiple modes of communication to satisfy the requirement to interact in work and social interaction, both in basically public and privately, contrary to common assumption. Overall, our interviews reveal that contentment in a community benefits both the people and the program, and that it generally supports educators' attempts to provide such a community for their distance learners.