response 51 of 176:

Apr 27 15:06 UTC 2001

resp:50

("As a current Board member and former staff member, I am pretty 
convinced I know more about what is going on that you do?"  that's 
just *too* easy.)  :P

(again, you're joking, right?  I haven't even addressed site-bans 
yet.)  ;)

response 53 of 176:

Apr 27 15:33 UTC 2001

Site-bans are also "normal": grex uses them as well..
Any admin uses them.
Only an idiot would NOT use them.
(For what and why is your issue).

response 55 of 176:

Apr 27 16:32 UTC 2001

resp:52

(so you admit that such limitations had been implemented?  I'll 
grant that the text I cited was revised only as recently as March 18, 
2000, so if Arbornet has moved away from limiting tty allocations 
based on donor status [of which I was aware] and IP address [of which 
I was not aware] since that time because of the actions of a script 
kiddie from Brighton and a rogue staff member, then cheers to them.  
that doesn't explain away the xenophobic attitude apparently supported 
by most of Arbornet.)

(then again, you seem to think that Chinet moved to NT along with 
CBBS.  ;P  you might want to look at the finger output from 
chinet.chinet.com again.)  

resp:53

(in the interest of clarifying the misinformation you seem to provide 
so willingly, I'll note that Grex used a site ban once, as previously 
posted in the Coop conference, when contact with a particular site's 
sysadmins failed to yield productive results.  it was a big deal then,
and was lifted fairly shortly thereafter.  if you're aware of any 
other time Grex has used a site ban, feel free to point it out.)  :P

---

(frankly, if the only things people can pick out about resp:37 are
the mentions of port allocations and Backtalk, then I'm pribly very
much on the mark.)

(jep, out of curiosity, what sort of net connection are you using?  
I'm currently using a cable modem, and never have to wait more than 
a minute for a page to load, even with a full 20 responses.  I had
similar response times while in Québec, using whatever connection
Université Laval had at the time.  have you considered that perhaps
the delays in Backtalk aren't necessarily on Grex's end?)

response 59 of 176:

Apr 30 01:42 UTC 2001

Grex does "block sites" (using tcpd) with some frequency.  Usually these
attract no notice and generate no complaints because they involve sites
*only* used by a vandal.  The most recent case involved a mail bomber
from Poland who liked to running a mail based DOS attack involving us
and about 2-3 other "free" Unix sites.

response 61 of 176:

Apr 30 07:42 UTC 2001

Well yeah, it probably would have to be cleaned up and rack mounted.  It would
have to be moved as well, meaning that it wouldn't be much more work for Grex
to rack mount its stuff than it would be for anybody moving into a colo
facility.  Grex even has that rack mount Sun 690 case sitting in the Pumpkin.

Anyhow, Grex's current cabling mess is not a feature.  Stuff would be much
more managable even wehre it currently is if that were cleaned up.

response 63 of 176:

May 2 23:28 UTC 2001

I'd be interested in seeing photos of the existing wiring mess if anyone
wanted to take the time to put them on the web.

I think if Grex could find the right friendly colo provider, colo would
be a good way to go, but my experience also indicates that if you don't
personally know some of the people at the colo facility, life can be painful.
(At one point, I was working for a company that hosted its web server at Level
3.  On two occasions, they lost our network connection.  I physically went
over there, since it took all of ten minutes to walk from the office to the
colo facility, and then got to call the people in Denver to get the problem
fixed, and the folks in Denver just didn't seem to care all that much.
In spite of the fact that we were paying like $1200/mo for the rack and
bandwidth.)

response 65 of 176:

May 5 05:00 UTC 2001

$1200/mo is a lot more than we pay now.  If that's the going rate,
switching won't save us any $.  Another factor to consider is: right
now, the pumpkin has extra storage space for spares, future development,
etc., essentially "for free".  A colo deal is *very* unlikely to include
such space.  That means any spares, development work, etc., would have
to take place "elsewhere" - either in space we rent for the purpose (in
which case we're right back to the pumpkin case), or in people's private
homes.  We've had a policy in the past of avoiding using people's
private homes for storage - and in the cases where grex has violated
this (including the CE warehouse which we got "for free") it has never
worked well in the long run.

An additional factor to consider is "who" has "what" kind of access.
What we'd like to have is unlimited 24 hr access for about 6-8 staff
members.  Most of the work done will be after hours or weekends, because
that's when our volunteer staff has time.  What we found is that colo
deals typically only include access during "business" hours, and usually
want to limit access to the smallest # of people possible -- 1-2.  This
is very similar to the type of access we had at CE.  This works great,
as long as the equipment works and no upgrades are done (or are planned
*very* carefully in advance).  It also works well for most commercial
businesses, which have full-time staff during regular hours, and enough
budget to replace any or all hardware if it's even remotely suspected of
being flakey.  It works terribly if something goes flakey and one is
trying to conserve money and not replace things until proven guilty, and
it really sucks when something goes dead at the start of a long weekend.
We had both of these problems at CE.

response 67 of 176:

May 6 01:42 UTC 2001

There are rare cases of people staying at ISP jobs consistently.  However,
I don't know of any such people around Ann Arbor.

response 69 of 176:

May 25 13:33 UTC 2001

Our current contract runs until 7/15, so we have until 6/15 if we want to
negotiate a different deal.  (The contract automatically renews for another
year unless we give them 30 days notice.)  We've passed the point where they
could tell us that they are raising our rates, so if we go with the one-year
contract we're locked in at $135/month.  Is that still a good rate?

response 71 of 176:

May 26 03:37 UTC 2001

(Just to clarify for everyone: our ISP is CoreComm, not Covad.  I gather
that CoreComm gets its feed from Covad, though, so if Covad goes under we're
in trouble.)

response 73 of 176:

May 26 05:31 UTC 2001

Grex staff also didn't do any backups for 3 months.  It was shear luck
that didn't bite us too badly.  I have yet to meet the machine room that
was so squeaky clean *no* dust got on equipment.  You need a "white
room" for that, and I don't know of any colocation facility that offers
such space.  I also don't know of any colocation facility that would
allow us to store "spare" equipment.

response 75 of 176:

May 26 07:50 UTC 2001

We've done the 'someone's basement' thing before.  Generally, this is an
intolerable nuisance for the victim when it actually comes time to claim
the stuff.  Grex stuff could be divided into the following classes:
        <1> equipment actually in use
        <2> spare equipment duplicating what's in use
        <3> backups, documentation and other stuff
        <4> future hardware being tested or worked on before placing
                in service
        <5> donations or cheap acquisitions that we hope will turn
                into 4,2,1.
        <6> old stuff, such as equipment that was either in use,
                or became obselete before we figured out how to use it
        <7> stuff to put other stuff on, including shelves, desk, chairs.

Of these 7 classes, a colo location will generally only take 1.  Even 1
may be limited - the grex "console" might have to become a laptop that
is used on the floor in front of the machine, for instance.
Documentation - too bad, it will have to live in people's heads.
Backups live at various people's houses.  A nuisance, but thank god
backups are physically small, and only the newest one is actually
useful.  Future hardware - have to become much more dependent on one-man
shows - no more shared undertakings, or the leisure to spend 6 months
porting all the software to a new hardware platform.  Donations or cheap
acquisitions - forget it; plan on purchasing *new* hardware instead,
spending more money, and probably being more vulnerable to vandals.  Old
stuff - well, there, at least, the tax vultures will have nothing to
pick on.

Actually, if someone has a cheap 386 laptop or two they'd like to donate
to grex, we really could use it as the console.