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Grex > Coop11 > #32: How should we determine how many dialin lines we should have? | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 154 responses total. |
janc
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response 59 of 154:
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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.
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janc
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response 60 of 154:
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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
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janc
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response 61 of 154:
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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%
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janc
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response 62 of 154:
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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.
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other
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response 63 of 154:
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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.
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hhsrat
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response 64 of 154:
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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.
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russ
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response 65 of 154:
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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.
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cmcgee
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response 66 of 154:
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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.
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pfv
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response 67 of 154:
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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.
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scg
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response 68 of 154:
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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.
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pfv
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response 69 of 154:
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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..
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scott
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response 70 of 154:
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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.
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other
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response 71 of 154:
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May 17 21:27 UTC 2000 |
My necro-equo-flagellation alarm is buzzing...
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eeyore
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response 72 of 154:
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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.
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devnull
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response 73 of 154:
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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.)
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eeyore
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response 74 of 154:
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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?
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scg
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response 75 of 154:
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May 21 04:34 UTC 2000 |
The Net connections aren't a scarce resource. The dial-ups are.
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aruba
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response 76 of 154:
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May 21 15:09 UTC 2000 |
At the moment, that's not true, Steve. I dialup most of the time too.
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scg
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response 77 of 154:
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May 21 15:41 UTC 2000 |
Ok, let me rephrase that. The Net connections aren't an expensive resource.
The dial-ups are.
The limit on the number of incoming telnet connections is an entirely
artificial limit. It was a matter of taking how many simultanious users
somebody felt Grex could support well, and subtracting the number of dial-up
lines. Raising that is a matter of changing a configuration file.
The dial-up lines cost at least $20 each. Any dial-up line we can get rid
of means the formula that was used to set the number of incoming telnet users
would call for increasing the number of telnet users. For that matter, lower
usage of the dial-ups, even if they're still there, would call for increasing
the number of telnet users.
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cmcgee
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response 78 of 154:
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May 21 16:07 UTC 2000 |
Some of us use dialups so we have internet access from our home. Otherwise
its a trip to the library and a time-limited access there, only during
business hours (which, for example, will not include Sunday starting next
week).
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scg
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response 79 of 154:
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May 21 17:10 UTC 2000 |
Right. I'm not saying that the dial-ups are useless, just that they're more
expensive to provide. Clearly we get some benefit out of having some number
of dial-up lines.
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gull
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response 80 of 154:
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May 22 05:58 UTC 2000 |
So basically, people who dial in because they have to are fine. People who
could telnet in, but dial in instead to avoid the queue, are effectively
costing Grex money. (Not directly, of course, but effectively by making it
look like we need more dialin lines than we really do.)
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other
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response 81 of 154:
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May 22 06:17 UTC 2000 |
That is not an accurate representation of the facts, though it is a
convincingly damning interpretation.
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scg
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response 82 of 154:
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May 22 06:22 UTC 2000 |
I think the way I would explain it is this: Everybody who dials in costs
Grex more money to support them than somebody who telnets in. That's a fact.
Given that fact, whether the users we gain by having the dial-ups are worth
more to us than the cost of the dial-ups is a question. I believe the answer
to that question is yes.
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albaugh
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response 83 of 154:
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May 22 21:58 UTC 2000 |
What "fact"?! Does grex pay ma bell by the connection minute? I think not!
Nobody is costing grex anything more than grex chooses to provide. It's a
resource. It costs the same whether anyone uses a dialup or not. So just
get off the whole "users costing grex more" argument.
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