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| Author |
Message |
aaron
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Phone Lines
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Jun 29 19:41 UTC 1996 |
Is there a reason, other than financial, that Grex still uses so many
2400 baud connections? What would be involved in upgrading all of the
lines to 9600 or 14.4?
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| 15 responses total. |
scott
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response 1 of 15:
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Jun 29 20:38 UTC 1996 |
Two issues:
Modems. We currently have 6 14.4 modems active, and 4 2400 modems. We have
obtained more 14.4 modems (7 of them) but we still need to do some more work
before we can use them.
tty lines. Our multiport serial card, a device that connects all the modems
to Grex, only has high speed connections for 4 modems. That is because only
those four, out of the sixteen total, have hardware handshaking lines to
handle flow control. So beyond the four fast modems we have now, we need to
get faster tty connections. We have a high speed terminal server but we are
having too many problems with it to use it.
Status of these two issues:
STeve Andre' has offered to work on the new modems. However, he's also
actively working to find a place for Grex to move to.
Steve Gibbard has offered to work on the terminal server, but is spending a
lot of time on his real job. The server is under warranty, so we shouldn't
have any problem once somebody has found time to work on it.
We're having trouble getting these sorts of things done these days, mainly
because nobody has much free time. After the Sun 4 came on-line, everybody
went back to their legitimate jobs and/or lives.
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srw
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response 2 of 15:
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Jun 29 20:44 UTC 1996 |
Our serial board, the ALM II, only has four ports with control lines to
support flow control. The others lack it. So only four of the modems
are running at a faster speed. We have new faster modems which will replace
the old slower ones, but we can't run them at full speed until we figure out
what is wrong with the terminal server.
We have a terminal server, but it is not working properly. We plan to contact
the manufacturer to see if whatever is defective can be replaced. This will
handle 16 high speed lines (more than we have at the moment), but we also need
to finish the programming work on telnetd. A staffer started that, but it is
not finished. If we tried to bring the terminal server up without that, people
would get "all telnet ports in use" when they dialed in on a local line.
That would be very bad.
Once the terminal server and telnetd are ready, most of the lines can be
moved from the ALM II to the terminal server. That's the plan.
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srw
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response 3 of 15:
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Jun 29 20:45 UTC 1996 |
1 slipped in.
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popcorn
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response 4 of 15:
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Jul 9 11:27 UTC 1996 |
Speaking of telephone things: Grex has had someone else's phone calls to 900
numbers listed on its bill for the last 2 months. The first month had $1600
of calls; I'm not sure about the second month. After the first bill like
this, STeve called Ameritech, who said they realized that the calls aren't
ours, and they would take the calls off our bill. The second month's bill
had nothing taken off it, and it had additional new calls. Ameritech sent
Grex a shutoff notice; Grex board/staff folks first saw the shutoff notice
yesterday. The phone lines are supposed to be turned off today. I located
STeve, who will call Ameritech and see if he can straighten things out before
they cut off service.
Yikes!!
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n8nxf
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response 5 of 15:
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Jul 9 12:18 UTC 1996 |
Thuis is typical of big organizations. The left hand doesn't see the right
type thing... Be persistant and try to work your way up to someone who has
the ability to really do what you want done. The customer service rep.
often doesn't have this level of authority.
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rickyb
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response 6 of 15:
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Jul 9 15:12 UTC 1996 |
Also, make sure you have third-party charges disabled to all grex lines. I
found out the hard way that anyone can charge a "collect" call to a corp #
unless the business owner specifically asks to have that disabled. grex
phones are likely considered business phones by the telco and the "900#'s"
may have been charged to grex from a third party at some other location. even
if not, turn off that avenue for abuse anyway.
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ajax
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response 7 of 15:
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Jul 9 16:01 UTC 1996 |
The suspense is killing me...I'm gonna go call my Psychic Friend to find
out if Grex's phone lines will be shut off!
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rcurl
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response 8 of 15:
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Jul 10 01:59 UTC 1996 |
Seems to still be up....the inefficiency of Ameritech may have extended
to doing what they said they were going to do.... 8^?
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popcorn
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response 9 of 15:
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Jul 10 03:16 UTC 1996 |
STeve talked to Ameritech. There are still more mystery charges on our phone
bill, which Ameritech is looking into.
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tsty
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response 10 of 15:
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Jul 10 06:48 UTC 1996 |
<<heh --- amerijerks are still trying to collect >$10,000 from me after
i placed them on notice that my line was stolen by someone ... and it
took over 90 days for them to squash it. i had notified about 4 amerijerk
departments, including a special fraud unit. 1st mo=~$3k, 2nd=~2.5k and
3rd mo +~$5.5k, total ~$10.5k (allow for rounding errors).>> even the
MI state police got into the act ... no diff ...sigh>>
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ajax
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response 11 of 15:
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Jul 10 07:12 UTC 1996 |
I think I read on Grex's Ameritech bill that we had 3 months from some date
to dispute the charges. If things don't clear up soon, we should probably
try to get some proof in writing that we objected within that time frame.
"I called and you said it would be taken care of" won't hold legal weight,
and that's a lot of money for Grex.
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rickyb
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response 12 of 15:
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Jul 10 13:38 UTC 1996 |
If you have _contemporaneous notes_ from the call, including the date, time,
# called, and name of person spoken to, that will hold up as a dispute claim.
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adbarr
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response 13 of 15:
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Jul 12 12:39 UTC 1996 |
A validated return receipt from a certified letter objecting to the charges,
as well as putting them on notice about any future 900 number charges being
invalid etc., would be good for your secretary to have. Notes are good
but the reciept is a little better.
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rickyb
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response 14 of 15:
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Jul 12 19:28 UTC 1996 |
I agree arnold, but I was referring to possible notes from a call already
conducted. A certified letter with return reciept should be sent now, if it
hasn't been sent already.
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steve
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response 15 of 15:
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Jul 15 00:55 UTC 1996 |
Things have camled down with Ameritech now. Once we've figured out about
moving stuff we can deal with other things like getting the terminal server
up and running, which will let us go beyond 2400bps on all ports.
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