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Grex > Coop11 > #32: How should we determine how many dialin lines we should have? | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 154 responses total. |
scg
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response 33 of 154:
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Oct 7 02:00 UTC 1998 |
The problem with that method (if I understand it correctly without doing all
the math involved) is that it goes to average usage, while what matters is
peak usage. If we have 100 users, all of whom spend 1/10 of every day on
line, then if they all spread their usage out evenly, 10 or 11 lines might
be enough to not have busy signals. If all 100 want to connect at the same
time, we will need lines to accomodate them. I suspect we're at neither
extreme.
If we were a business, with the main goal of keeping our customers happy, we
would want to guarantee that there wouldn't be any busy signals. That would
mean that if there were some time of day when 50% of our customers were on
line, we would want enough modems to accomodate 50% of the customers at once,
without a problem. We're a non-profit chairity, providing a free public
service. Our goal can't be to provide the best service around, because it
just isn't possible given our resources (ok, maybe it is, but that would
reflect badly on the commercial services rather than particularly well on us).
What we need to do is figure out how we can best serve our mission of
providing access to everything that Grex is while living within our shoestring
financial limitations. Given that, the occasional busy signal is ok. The
question we have to answer is how long is it acceptable for it to take for
somebody to get through. 15 minutes very occasionally is probably ok,
especially since it hopefully won't be the same person hitting the busy
signals every month. I'm not sure if five minutes a day would be acceptable
or not. If it's always the same people gettin gthe busy signals, I suspect
it isn't. If it's different people different days, which it probably would
be, we can probably live with it.
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mary
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response 34 of 154:
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Oct 7 13:20 UTC 1998 |
Er, my percentage formula called for only looking
at peak use time.
I agree with your entire second paragraph.
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rtgreen
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response 35 of 154:
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Oct 8 05:47 UTC 1998 |
Mary and Steve: You're both right, sort of. Mary's formula would yield
the average use during the peak hours. ;-)
I, too, like the second paragraph. We're on the right track here. In my
thinking, the number of incidents of a busy signal is much less important
than the duration of an incident. If each incident is only a minute, I
think we could tolerate them every hour, but if each incident were fifteen
minutes, I would get worried if it happened more than once a day.
I haven't looked recently. What does qgraph tell us for the past two
months? Is it realistic to look at July & August as typical, with
vacations giving people more time to grex, or leave town and not grex?
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janc
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response 36 of 154:
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Oct 28 20:45 UTC 1998 |
I kludged up my dialup usage program to make it possible to skip over
mangled parts of the wtmp file. I was able to get August data, and
data for the current month, but September was kind of chewed up. I'm
not 100% confident of this data. But here it is:
Usage between Sat Aug 1 00:00:00 1998 and Mon Aug 31 23:59:59 1998
of IP addresses: 204.212.46.131
LINES HOURS PERCENTAGE
0: 131.54 17.68%
1: 82.23 11.05%
2: 104.12 13.99%
3: 101.13 13.59%
4: 93.41 12.55%
5: 77.11 10.36%
6: 55.66 7.48%
7: 38.16 5.12%
8: 28.64 3.84%
9: 15.23 2.04%
10: 8.38 1.12%
11: 4.91 .65%
12: 2.46 .33%
13: 1.02 .13%
TOTAL 744.00 100.00%
Average number of lines in use: 3.36
Usage between Thu Oct 1 00:00:00 1998 and Wed Oct 28 15:07:48 EST 1998
of IP addresses: 204.212.46.131
LINES HOURS PERCENTAGE
0: 29.46 4.43%
1: 94.28 14.19%
2: 113.62 17.10%
3: 121.61 18.31%
4: 108.76 16.37%
5: 83.13 12.51%
6: 52.55 7.91%
7: 30.95 4.66%
8: 15.92 2.39%
9: 8.09 1.21%
10: 3.86 .58%
11: 1.38 .20%
12: 0.39 .05%
13: 0.10 .01%
TOTAL: 664.10 100.00%
Average number of lines in use: 3.5068
Mark is also working on generating some data, and Scott should be able to
get some from the terminal servers. Personally, I think we can drop two
lines, and should certainly drop one.
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janc
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response 37 of 154:
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Oct 28 21:06 UTC 1998 |
Here are some snapshots of who was on the dialin when 13 people were dialed
on this month:
--USER-- --LINE-- --------SINCE---------
sixx ttyqa Tue Oct 6 19:44:08 1998
pthomas ttyuc Tue Oct 6 19:48:15 1998
wrestler ttytd Tue Oct 6 19:54:07 1998
jor ttyp5 Tue Oct 6 19:16:12 1998
aruba ttys3 Tue Oct 6 18:34:39 1998
zeroacid ttyrf Tue Oct 6 19:08:04 1998
happyboy ttyq7 Tue Oct 6 19:43:57 1998
bookie ttys8 Tue Oct 6 19:52:51 1998
kme ttyr6 Tue Oct 6 18:29:06 1998
tiyose ttyse Tue Oct 6 19:25:34 1998
acorn ttyt2 Tue Oct 6 18:34:02 1998
headdoc ttyq6 Tue Oct 6 19:44:28 1998
benni ttyud Tue Oct 6 19:54:23 1998
--USER-- --LINE-- --------SINCE---------
bookie ttypb Tue Oct 6 22:49:06 1998
acorn ttytb Tue Oct 6 22:41:48 1998
dpfitzen ttyue Tue Oct 6 22:12:33 1998
sekari ttype Tue Oct 6 22:28:51 1998
lbmiller ttyqe Tue Oct 6 22:42:16 1998
morpheus ttyqb Tue Oct 6 22:49:51 1998
gabriel ttyr1 Tue Oct 6 22:37:24 1998
suzie ttyua Tue Oct 6 22:26:48 1998
russ ttyrf Tue Oct 6 22:44:36 1998
kme ttyr6 Tue Oct 6 18:29:06 1998
eeyore ttyp7 Tue Oct 6 22:49:56 1998
jbo ttys5 Tue Oct 6 22:50:46 1998
ricke ttyp9 Tue Oct 6 22:50:49 1998
--USER-- --LINE-- --------SINCE---------
dpfitzen ttyp4 Sun Oct 18 20:27:32 1998
traveler ttyp2 Sun Oct 18 20:21:09 1998
lbmiller ttyp5 Sun Oct 18 20:28:56 1998
other ttyq7 Sun Oct 18 19:56:56 1998
krj ttyq1 Sun Oct 18 20:14:22 1998
snookie ttys7 Sun Oct 18 20:28:45 1998
aruba ttyq2 Sun Oct 18 20:21:22 1998
kharder ttyua Sun Oct 18 20:02:10 1998
mermaid ttyuf Sun Oct 18 20:07:28 1998
hmv ttyub Sun Oct 18 20:20:03 1998
laotzu ttys2 Sun Oct 18 20:27:57 1998
illogic ttysf Sun Oct 18 20:09:00 1998
dsmith ttyu8 Sun Oct 18 20:08:13 1998
--USER-- --LINE-- ----------SINCE----------
mary ttys0 Thu Oct 22 21:26:53 1998
acorn ttyt9 Thu Oct 22 21:28:20 1998
eeyore ttypb Thu Oct 22 21:12:48 1998
sixx ttyq6 Thu Oct 22 21:28:35 1998
senna ttyp5 Thu Oct 22 21:28:41 1998
thea ttyr4 Thu Oct 22 21:07:13 1998
n8rxs ttyr8 Thu Oct 22 20:40:16 1998
imax ttyp1 Thu Oct 22 21:31:09 1998
indi ttyrc Thu Oct 22 21:18:12 1998
ckallery ttyqc Thu Oct 22 20:34:06 1998
kharder ttys5 Thu Oct 22 21:34:38 1998
mrmat ttys3 Thu Oct 22 21:17:07 1998
orinoco ttyrd Thu Oct 22 21:32:05 1998
I don't think aruba uses the staff dialin, and I'm sure none of the others
do, so I think this means we were full with regular users, and anyone else
dialing in during the 6 minutes in October that these cover would have
gotten a busy tone. If we cut one line, we'd probably have had a bit more
than 35 minutes of busy tones this month.
Unless other people get data that looks much difference, my inclination would
be to cut just one dialin.
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aruba
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response 38 of 154:
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Nov 3 19:40 UTC 1998 |
I called Ameritech today and had them drop the last two lines in our trunk
hunt, per the board's vote last Wednesday. See the minutes for details.
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janc
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response 39 of 154:
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Nov 6 05:19 UTC 1999 |
At the last board meeting, Mark reminded me that I once wrote a program
that measures dialin line use. I happened to find it today, and ran it:
August:
NUMBER TOTAL
OF LINES HOURS PERCENT
0: 111.53 14.99
1: 141.76 19.05
2: 146.90 19.74
3: 124.61 16.74
4: 94.99 12.77
5: 60.64 8.15
6: 32.91 4.42
7: 17.04 2.29
8: 8.73 1.17
9: 3.81 0.51
10: 0.90 0.12
11: 0.19 0.03
September:
NUMBER TOTAL
OF LINES HOURS PERCENT
0: 81.64 11.34
1: 167.46 23.26
2: 176.80 24.56
3: 126.28 17.54
4: 82.78 11.50
5: 45.93 6.38
6: 22.25 3.09
7: 10.65 1.48
8: 4.18 0.58
9: 1.57 0.21
10: 0.45 0.06
October:
NUMBER TOTAL
OF LINES HOURS PERCENT
0: 101.93 13.70
1: 162.66 21.86
2: 178.22 23.95
3: 124.79 16.77
4: 86.01 11.56
5: 46.84 6.29
6: 25.89 3.48
7: 12.07 1.62
8: 4.82 0.65
9: 1.46 0.20
10: 0.28 0.04
11: 0.02 0.00
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scg
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response 40 of 154:
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Nov 6 05:22 UTC 1999 |
So it looks like our last line's barely in use. In theory we could cut it.
The same could probably be said for the last four or so lines.
However, one thing I've noticed at work is that dial-in line usage goes way
up as the weather outside gets colder. I'm not sure if that applies to Grex
or not, but it makes sense that it would. It will be interesting to see if
usage of Grex's dial-ins picks up over the winter.
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gelinas
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response 41 of 154:
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Nov 6 06:00 UTC 1999 |
Yes, it will. When first reading Jan's stats, my thought was to reduce
to 8 or 9 lines. After reading the text and responses, I'd say dropping
to 9 would be reasonable.
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other
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response 42 of 154:
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Nov 6 06:22 UTC 1999 |
since dropping doesn't cost, but adding does, i would prefer to see drops done
at a rate of no more than one per month, just to allow time to reassess.
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don
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response 43 of 154:
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Nov 6 23:13 UTC 1999 |
How much is each line costing us per month now? I don't think it would be that
much compared to the profits/losses per month.
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scott
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response 44 of 154:
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Nov 7 00:33 UTC 1999 |
Each line is about $20/mo? That tends to add up pretty fast.
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gelinas
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response 45 of 154:
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Nov 7 01:37 UTC 1999 |
I just realised that my first sentence in #41 is ambiguous. The pronoun
refers to "interesting", not to dial-in usage. I've no opinion of what
will happen to dial-in usage.
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aruba
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response 46 of 154:
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Nov 7 16:07 UTC 1999 |
Cutting a phone line would save us approximately $18.81 per month.
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remmers
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response 47 of 154:
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Nov 8 17:51 UTC 1999 |
And $18 is equivalent to three monthly memberships. That's a
significant amount.
I agree with Eric that we shouldn't drop more than one line at once,
and should allow time to assess the consequences before making
further decisions. Line 11 is definitely a candidate for removal
if low usage continues during the cold weather months.
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kaplan
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response 48 of 154:
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Nov 10 01:54 UTC 1999 |
How much would it cost to reconnect one?
I'd say users would barely notice if get rid of two or three lines
based on Jan's numbers. We're not running a business here where people
will take their money elsewhere at the first busy signal. I think
most of our users will tolerate dialing back in again later if they get
busy signals.
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aruba
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response 49 of 154:
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Nov 10 15:08 UTC 1999 |
I believe it costs $42 (plus tax) to install a new line. At least that was
the price last time we did so.
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i
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response 50 of 154:
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Nov 11 02:09 UTC 1999 |
Ameritech has periodic "free installation" sales if we could wait to
do the reinstall.
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davel
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response 51 of 154:
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Nov 11 03:17 UTC 1999 |
I sort of thought those were just for residential customers.
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pfv
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response 52 of 154:
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Nov 11 04:45 UTC 1999 |
They also aren't "free" - tried that once and the
miserable SOBS hid payments in the next billings.
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aruba
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response 53 of 154:
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Nov 11 15:35 UTC 1999 |
Grex took advantage of a free installation sale once in the past. I haven't
heard about any recently, though.
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keesan
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response 54 of 154:
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Nov 13 02:05 UTC 1999 |
I dial in often and have not gotten a busy line for several months, but used
to get one a few times a month last spring. It was not a problem and I could
stand busy lines twice as often as before. Which times of day have the
highest dial-in usage? I get the impression around 11 am, 4 pm, 8 pm.
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scott
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response 55 of 154:
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May 12 23:42 UTC 2000 |
I think it's time to do another serious evaluation of phone lines.
I've recently noticed that local modem useage is much lower than it used to
be. Didn't Jan have a way to really nail down modem stats? The "qgraph"
program Valerie wrote (which is a little less accurate) indicates very low
modem use.
I'm not advocating cutting off all modems (standard disclaimer), but it seems
like modem use has dropped off quite a bit. With the new Internet
connectivity issue, we probably need to see if we're paying for too many modem
lines.
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janc
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response 56 of 154:
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May 13 05:16 UTC 2000 |
Hmm...the recent restart of the wtmp file is confusing my program a
bit. I can run it on the days since that:
Usage between Sat Apr 29 00:00:00 2000 and Fri May 12 23:59:59 2000
of IP address: 204.212.46.132
users hours percentage
0: 95.89 28.54%
1: 105.99 31.54%
2: 75.23 22.39%
3: 37.14 11.05%
4: 15.20 4.52%
5: 4.81 1.43%
6: 0.86 0.26%
7: 0.45 0.13%
8: 0.08 0.02%
This covers only a two week period though. I'll fiddle with the program
a bit and see if I can get the data for a longer period.
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i
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response 57 of 154:
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May 13 13:22 UTC 2000 |
Hmmm. If the trend holds, we should trim phone lines and perhaps put
the money into a faster net connection. But maybe hold off trimming
until after the new net connection is up & stable.
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