HVCN and Grex

Oct 7 02:54 UTC 1997

At the last board meeting, I put on my HVCN hat, and expressed to the 
board what we have been thinking over at HVCN about access.

For several years, as you probably know, HVCN has been planning on 
adding access and free email. We do believe that these are an important 
part of the standard suite of services offered by a community network. 

So far, we haven't gotten very far, and the reason is very simple. It is 
hard and expensive to provide these services. When folks write me as 
webmaster of HVCN, asking about dial-up and e-mail services, I 
invariably provide them with all the information they need to be able to 
find Grex and get started over here. HVCN has been running on its own 
server for almost 6 months now, and this has given us a chance to 
reassess our thinking on this issue.

Anything we would spend time and effort on in this direction would be a 
direct duplication of the services grex provides. We find it hard to 
justify spending the kind of effort it takes to provide these services, 
especially when it would be reinventing the wheel. It is perfectly clear 
that these services are needed, but it is not clear that they need to be 
provided by so many organizations.

At the most recent HVCN board meeting (Sunday 10/5) the sense of the 
HVCN board was that I could replace the explanation on HVCN's web site 
of HVCN's future plans to provide dial-up and e-mail. I was given 
permission to replace them with pages explaining that local users who 
want these services should get them from Grex, complete with pointers to 
Grex's web site, telephone numbers and modem settings, the works.

I am posting this item here to discuss this change. I certainly do not 
plan on executing it against the wishes of the Grex staff, the Grex 
board, or the grex membership. I have a general sense that there would 
be no serious objection. I am a grexer, too, so let me put on ny grex 
hat and see if I can outline the advantages and disadvantages for grex.

advantages:
(1) This is yet another way to advertise grex to local users. There is 
currently an item in agora/coop to discuss ways to publicize ourelves. 
This is merely another way to do it. It focuses on people who are more 
likely to come in locally via dialup than over the net connection. 

(2) Grex gains recognition and automatic respectability with the other 
local organizations HVCN partners with (county government, district 
libraries throughout the county, many more). Not that Grex isn't already 
respectable, but it is at least a feather in its cap.

disadvantages:
(1) The most obvious one is that this could increase the load on the 
dialups. At 13 phone lines, we are running near capacity right now, but 
there is still some room for growth. The cost of maintaining these lines 
is borne by grex members and others who donate to grex in one way or 
another. 

(2) Hmm, I can't think of any other disadvantages.

Well, there may be more of either, and I hope discussion brings them 
out. At this point, HVCN is not really asking Grex to do anything it 
isn't already trying to do on its own, and HVCN is offering free 
advertising, for what it's worth. I think this may be a possible 
win-win situation.

response 2 of 36:

Oct 7 11:50 UTC 1997

Since HVCN doesn't have a dial-up I have not checked it out.  I guess
another question should be "Is HVCN where it wants to be?"  and "How
does this hurt HVCN?"

response 6 of 36:

Oct 7 15:28 UTC 1997

this should wait until email is offloaded to a second machine and
there wouldntbe any reason to fear increases emailloads.

response 8 of 36:

Oct 8 04:50 UTC 1997

Grex *is* trying to increase the usage of the dialups. That's really 
what I meant about asking Grex to do something it was trying to do 
anyway. My fear is that HVCN might add more than a small increment. That 
fear is probably overblown, at least in the near future.

HVCN needs to be able to show the people of this community that they can 
get free e-mail and free dialup access to the net via lynx. The folks at 
HVCN think that Grex is doing this part of the Community Network's job 
already. It clearly would be counterproductive for us to compete. We 
would rather *include* Grex as part of the community network. This is 
what I am now trying to make happen.

Once I have changed HVCN's dialup access instructions, we will probably 
want to issue a joint news release. This could be picked up by local 
newsppapers, and might generate a surge of interest. I would prefer to 
wait until the Grex infrastructure is a little more robust -- ISDN, at 
least.

M-Net is a good service for e-mail only. I like M-Net, but I have not 
been considering M-Net because they do not provide free access to the 
web via lynx. This is important to HVCN, because we can (hopefully) get 
users started on grex with a simple way to invoke: 

lynx http://www.hvcn.org/

which permits them direct access to HVCN's community infocenter pages, 
should they want to go there.

response 12 of 36:

Oct 9 02:27 UTC 1997

Steve, M-Net *does* provide free access to the Web via lynx!
We are always careful to install the newest available version
of lynx.  I use it constantly so as to avoid the *&(*&% ads
on the Web.
        So please do consider M-Net.

response 14 of 36:

Oct 9 23:42 UTC 1997

(The WIN grant fiasco probably left Grex and HVCN feeling friendlier to each
 other than either feels to M-Net.  Since the leadership at M-Net has largely
 changed, probably we should work on putting that behind us.)

response 16 of 36:

Oct 10 21:26 UTC 1997

Actually, richard, Arbornet (which runs M-Net) got a grant to run
K-12, and did it because we thought it was a good idea.  The formal
requirements for 501(c)(3) status are incomprehensible; the actual
requirements are basically that no one makes a lot of money, that
no profits are distributed, and that some kind of community purpose
is served.

response 18 of 36:

Oct 10 22:07 UTC 1997

It doesn't really matter if grex is "co-sponsoring HVCN", because that's
not our primary mission.  Ace hardware, or MSN, could co-sponsor HVCN
too, and it wouldn't make any difference (except, perhaps, that HVCN
could do a lot more).

response 20 of 36:

Oct 11 05:00 UTC 1997

Two or three years ago, there was some Federal agency that was giving out
grants to organizations that were doing big telecommunications or computer
networking projects.  Grex, Arbornet, and HVCN, agreed to join forces to apply
for a grant to put up a network of dial-up modem banks and public access
computing sites to enable the public to access our systems, and the Internet
as a whole.  There were a bunch of meetings in which a rather elaborate
network plan was put together.  Much of the way through the project, the
Arbornet people involved with the WIN (Washtenaw Information Networks) project
showed up at one of the meetings and announced that Arbornet had just applied
for a grant for a version of the WIN proposal, putting only Arbornet's name
on the application and leaving out the other members of the group.  Grex and
HVCN were left having to submit a proposal quite similar to one that had
already been submitted by another organization in the same town, a proposal
that the Grex and HVCN people had had as much input on as the Arbornet people
had.  That was the last time Grex or HVCN has tried to work cooperatively on
anything with Arbornet, because it made it very obvious at that time that the
leadership of Arbornet really couldn't be trusted.

As it turned out, it really didn't matter.  Congress cut most of the money
for the grant program before they could anounce the recipients, so WIN
wouldn't have gotten the funding anyway.  In a way, in this case, that's a
good thing.  Looking back on WIN's goals, Grex, HVCN, and Arbornet may not
have gotten what we were hoping to get out of it, but the goals of providing
various services to the community have mostly been met.  The Ann ArborPublic
Library, which was supposed to be one of WIN's public computing sites, now
has a bunch of Internet connected computers with a much faster Internet
connection than WIN was going to get for them.  The public access dial-up and
Internet access parts of the project have been achieved in a much better way
than WIN would have been likely to accomplis by lots of private companies,
selling Internet access cheaply enough that it is now very affordable.  I'm
actually kind of glad the WIN project never happened, since the community got
most of its benefits anyway, and those of us who would have worked on it got
a lot more free time.

It should also be noted that Arbornet's leadership at the time was a very
different group than Arbornet's present leadership.  The actions of the
Arbornet of two or three years ago shoudl not be held against the Arbornet
of today.

response 22 of 36:

Oct 12 01:12 UTC 1997

Any idea where the smell is now?  >8)

response 24 of 36:

Oct 12 23:39 UTC 1997

Thanx, srw!