response 78 of 125:

Oct 20 15:55 UTC 1998

Could someone take the IC-Net message out of the MOTD?  It would shorten
the MOTD by two line and help fight "bloat."

response 80 of 125:

Oct 20 20:02 UTC 1998

I'd suggest waiting until a final decision is made and the deed is done/not
done before removing the ICNet message from the MOTD.  It is only two lines
after all, and a few more days of thanking ICNet for all they've done for us
isn't too much to ask.

response 82 of 125:

Oct 23 00:34 UTC 1998

Actually, we don't know that's so.  Sun has released quite a few y2k
patches for sunos, most of which we've installed (some, such as the
patch for passwd, don't apply to us).  The basic data structures used by
Unix and most unix utilities shouldn't be affected by y2k, so there's no
reason to expect that sunos will turn belly-up on jan 1.  The most
likely effects of y2k on sunos would be a few utilities might produce
weird output; this is not necessarily all that big a disaster.  One
thing we haven't done (but should have) was to do some y2k testing
before switching onto the 670.  That's a shame.

Solaris has its own interesting problems, some of which are a
significant problem for us.  The kernel blocks we have would be
non-trivial to install in solaris, which has a completely different
tcp/ip architecture.  While Sun does distribute a C compiler with
solaris, it is not free; you have to purchase a license from sun and run
the license manager to use it.  The vandals have found quite a few
security holes in various versions of solaris.  We'd probably need to
get the latest stable solaris release, and do quite a bit of research to
make sure we have the right set of patches for it, that fix all the
holes found by the vandals.  Doing this right means finding a 2nd
machine to run in parallel with grex, which we don't have.  On the
bright side of things, solaris would fix the uid overflow problem, which
may be a more serious problem for us than y2k.

response 84 of 125:

Nov 2 03:18 UTC 1998

So, I take it staff is not chomping at the bit to get their hands on solaris,
eh?  :-)

response 86 of 125:

Nov 3 07:40 UTC 1998

WHile surfing today, I came upon a note that Ameritech is now offering
ADSL service, in ANn Arbor only, for about $60 per month.  This is a
dedicated full-time 8M/640k service.  Even though the rates are skewed
the wrong way for our traffic, 640k is still 5 times our current speed,
for about the same price.

Hayes is selling an ADSL PCI card for a windows box for $299.  3COM has
an ADSL router with 4-port 10baseT hub builtin, but I couldn't find a
price.  Think we could get an ADSL router for close to what we could
sell our two pipelines for?

response 88 of 125:

Nov 3 21:15 UTC 1998

Ameritech's ADSL service wouldn't fit Grex's needs very well.  It only comes
with one IP address, which may be dynamically assigned (I'm not sure about
that, though).  It's a very fast connection to Ameritech and possibly to their
web cache, but not likely to be a very good connection to the rest of the
world.

The ADSL technology itself does look quite nice, and once ISPs other than
Ameritech start offering it in this area it will certainly be something worth
looking at.  I'm guessing, though, that the standard home user cheap ADSL
connection will never be very well suited for Grex's needs, since Grex's needs
are different from those of a typical home Internet user.

response 90 of 125:

Nov 4 06:20 UTC 1998

Yes, but an asymetric connection with 384K out and 1.5M in would still be
better for us than a connection that is 128K in both directions, since 384K
is bigger than 128K.  The asymmetry of ADSL doesn't bother me that much.  The
other problems are problems with ameritech.net's current ADSL offering, and
not with the technology itself.  Whenever it becomes easy for other ISPs to
offer ADSL service, I expect the other limitations will go away, for a price.

Grex actually probably could get by with only one IP address visible to the
outside world, using NAT (network address translation), if we had to.  It
wouldn't work as well as our current setup, and isn't anything we have a
reason to seriously consider, but it could be made to work if needed.

response 92 of 125:

Nov 4 07:32 UTC 1998

ANother word for nat is ip-masquerade.  I had it working on my Linux box
for about a year.  There were a few non-transparencies.

Sindi:  I'll send you e-mail, rather than tie up this conference with
definitions.

I hadn't heard the 384k/1.5M numbers.  Is that Ameritech's offering? 
the 640k/8M was from the 'modem' vendor's specs.

I was guessing that the residential offering would have one IP address,
although it's a dedicated, full-time connection, so I assume the address
is fixed.  They probably offer a block of IP addrs in their 'business'
offering at a higher price.

response 94 of 125:

Nov 4 21:09 UTC 1998

"All I want for Christmas is a fixed IP address..."

response 96 of 125:

Nov 10 04:12 UTC 1998

Two words: Open BSD.

response 98 of 125:

Nov 14 01:35 UTC 1998

My impression is that Linux/x86 is a very cool "toy", but hasn't got what 
it takes for real production use - it responds poorly to heavy system
loads, is generally less secure/stable, etc.  How similar is the current
Linux/SPARC?  (And what does the future seem to hold?)

I've heard many good things about FreeBSD/x86 as a cheap, reliable, etc.
solution *in limited, controlled environments*.  I think staff's already 
looking at *BSD/x86 systems as specialty processors to take some of the
load off grex itself (mail handling, etc.). 

response 100 of 125:

Jan 2 03:25 UTC 1999

I beta-tested the Ameritech ADSL service.  While it is much faster than 
my 28.8 modem, it was prone to frequent outages.  About once every 2 
weeks, it went down for at least 8 hours.  

The "modem" that Ameritech gave us was very noisy.  Every 6 hours or so, 
a very loud, high pitched, fan would turn on.  While this may not be 
much of a problem in a place such as the Pumpkin which is filled with 
computer equipment, it did get to be a little bit of a problem because 
my computer is in my bedroom.

response 102 of 125:

Jan 3 16:51 UTC 1999

It was a few months ago, they might have fixed some problems since then.

Ann Arbor - near Central Campus