|
Grex > Coop11 > #32: How should we determine how many dialin lines we should have? | |
|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 154 responses total. |
i
|
|
response 50 of 154:
| 
Nov 11 02:09 UTC 1999 |
Ameritech has periodic "free installation" sales if we could wait to
do the reinstall.
|
davel
|
|
response 51 of 154:
|
Nov 11 03:17 UTC 1999 |
I sort of thought those were just for residential customers.
|
pfv
|
|
response 52 of 154:
|
Nov 11 04:45 UTC 1999 |
They also aren't "free" - tried that once and the
miserable SOBS hid payments in the next billings.
|
aruba
|
|
response 53 of 154:
|
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.
|
keesan
|
|
response 54 of 154:
|
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.
|
scott
|
|
response 55 of 154:
|
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.
|
janc
|
|
response 56 of 154:
|
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.
|
i
|
|
response 57 of 154:
|
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.
|
janc
|
|
response 58 of 154:
|
May 13 13:36 UTC 2000 |
Here's April:
Usage between Sat Apr 1 00:00:00 2000 and Sun Apr 30 23:59:59 2000
of IP addresses:
204.212.46.132
0: 192.50 26.73%
1: 221.19 30.72%
2: 151.53 21.05%
3: 87.25 12.12%
4: 40.75 5.66%
5: 16.89 2.34%
6: 6.46 0.89%
7: 1.75 0.24%
8: 0.47 0.07%
9: 0.19 0.03%
10: 0.01 0.001%
|
janc
|
|
response 59 of 154:
|
May 13 13:42 UTC 2000 |
I'll be running a few more months statistics and posting statistics
later today. If we can eliminate a three more phone lines, we may be
able to afford 384K DSL. I don't know how many lines we actually have
right now.
|
janc
|
|
response 60 of 154:
|
May 13 17:49 UTC 2000 |
Scott says we currently have 11 lines. I need to run a few more months
statistics but it's starting to look like we could drop to 6 and hardly
know the difference. This would save us about $100 a month, enough to
upgrade the DSL from 192K to 384K. Of course, maybe this really means
that we should do a better job of promoting our dialins, or that we
should do something about implementing PPP support.
Usage between Wed Mar 1 00:00:00 2000 and Wed Mar 29 23:59:59 2000
of IP address: 204.212.46.132
0: 125.13 16.82%
1: 176.46 23.71%
2: 164.04 22.05%
3: 117.46 15.79%
4: 62.87 8.45%
5: 30.68 4.12%
6: 13.04 1.75%
7: 4.84 0.65%
8: 1.29 0.17%
9: 0.16 0.02%
10: 0 0
11: 0 0
|
janc
|
|
response 61 of 154:
|
May 13 20:42 UTC 2000 |
This covers two months:
Usage between Sat Jan 1 00:00:00 2000 and Tue Feb 29 23:59:59 2000
of IP addresses:
204.212.46.132
0: 146.60 10.18%
1: 320.70 22.27%
2: 369.84 25.68%
3: 271.57 18.86%
4: 164.40 11.42%
5: 89.82 6.24%
6: 47.74 3.32%
7: 20.40 1.39%
8: 6.59 0.45%
9: 1.71 0.12%
10: 0.29 0.02%
11: 0.01 0.001%
|
janc
|
|
response 62 of 154:
|
May 13 20:52 UTC 2000 |
I think we could cut to 6 lines and still have busy tones less than 1%
of the time, and the trend is downward.
|
other
|
|
response 63 of 154:
|
May 14 06:26 UTC 2000 |
i would hold off on reducing lines until after we see what effect there may
be from the TOP publicity.
|
hhsrat
|
|
response 64 of 154:
|
May 14 19:34 UTC 2000 |
If we reduce the number of potential dial-ups, could we maybe increase
the number of telnet ports to say 80 or something? This might cut down
on the queues a bit during the busy times.
|
russ
|
|
response 65 of 154:
|
May 17 03:03 UTC 2000 |
Re #64: Cutting off access to the IP's which account for lots
of e-mail accounts but no party/BBS users or contributions will
make the telnet queue a lot shorter. Grex will be better off for
it, too. What do we lose? What CAN we lose?
There was a time, not long ago, when Grex was shutting down many
afternoons (beginning of peak usage time) to process e-mail backlogs
for people who used nothing else. This is backwards. I think we
should put community first and freeloaders on an as-available basis.
If the telnet queue is too long, chop some freeloaders. Call it what
you will: a service delayed is a service denied.
I am still a dial-in user primarily because dial-ins bypass the queue.
|
cmcgee
|
|
response 66 of 154:
|
May 17 15:05 UTC 2000 |
NO! I'm a dialin user because Grex is my only sure access to the Internet.
But I don't think we should cut off IPs based on the type of use people make
of Grex. I'm one of those folks who came to Grex for email and stayed to be
part of a community, and got pulled into learning some UNIX.
What we lose if we cut off those IPs is a potential market. I don't remember
Grex shutting down afternoons to process email. If/when it did, it was more
than 3 years ago. Freeloaders? Excuse me, let's just become a membership
only group? No thank you. If we cut off the "freeloaders" we will have
to keep our membership growing by actively marketing Grex in some other way.
We haven't been real successful in doing that.
I personally could live with fewer dialin lines, unless TOP brings in a large
group of newbies. Neither they nor I would like Grex much if we got a lot
of busy signals.
I suggest we wait until 3 weeks after TOP to decide about cutting dialins.
|
pfv
|
|
response 67 of 154:
|
May 17 15:33 UTC 2000 |
TOP *might* affect dialin use, but I doubt it.
Whacking IP's would absolutlely affect use: and the data IS
available to root.
Grex is an ISP like the library is an ISP - only less so.
|
scg
|
|
response 68 of 154:
|
May 17 16:18 UTC 2000 |
The era of Grex getting so overloaded that it would have to shut down to
process mail was several years ago, on a diffferent hardware platform and a
different Internet connection.
|
pfv
|
|
response 69 of 154:
|
May 17 16:43 UTC 2000 |
Right.. Now, we just suffer "lag" as they compile eggbots and
suchlike. We just *never* get lag based on email anymore..
|
scott
|
|
response 70 of 154:
|
May 17 17:30 UTC 2000 |
If we drop dialins or block IP addresses, we lose our mission. Maybe to Russ
or pfv it's a fun place to chat or conference, but those two aren't our only
users.
|
other
|
|
response 71 of 154:
|
May 17 21:27 UTC 2000 |
My necro-equo-flagellation alarm is buzzing...
|
eeyore
|
|
response 72 of 154:
|
May 18 03:04 UTC 2000 |
Okay: On the matter of Lag: I've been around *6* years....And at this point
we are at the lowest point of lag that I've had to deal with. here. I'm
pretty much don't get lag, with the exception of maybe once or twice here and
there, right before a reboot or such. Quite frankly, lag just isn't an issue
anymore. People *will* compile eggdrops whether or not we want them to. Get
over it already!
At this point, I only dial-in, but very soon may start netting in again. I
agree that having some more net-in lines would be very useful, to cut down
on the que. Since I've not gotten a busy signal in more than a year, cutting
down on dial-in lines isn't a bad idea....no point in paying for something
that we aren't using. I would, however wait until after TOP....not that I
think that we'll get a huge dial-in boost, but if we do, we'll be available
for it. We do, however, need to fix whatever is wrong with the available
dial-in lines....I don't get busy signals, but I do get hung up on while
waiting for login prompt....or just get caught in the pickup, or other various
things on a regular basis....to the point of having to redial 6-7 times just
to login once.
|
devnull
|
|
response 73 of 154:
|
May 20 22:57 UTC 2000 |
Perhaps grex should come up with some policy for allowing people who are
in a local phone calling area to the dialups to get the same queue avoidance
if they come in through the internet that they get by using the dialups.
It sounds like grex may be paying for phone lines so that Ann Arbor people
can avoid the queue, and removing that incentive for people to use that
expensive resource (the phone lines) is probably worthwhile.
(Unless, of course, there isn't any substantial number of people who
use dialups just to avoid the queue.)
|
eeyore
|
|
response 74 of 154:
|
May 21 03:45 UTC 2000 |
I use the dialups because I really don't have a good way of accessing Grex
via the web. Even when I did, though, alot of times I did use dial up because
I *could*. Why tye up the the net connections if I can save them for somebody
else?
|