The Board is considering dropping our last two dial-in lines.  Staff 
looked at usage recently and found a total of 30 minutes of connect time 
over a one month period.  The treasurer could tell us exactly what our 
AT&T bill comes to each month but I suspect it's something over $50.

Would anyone object to this service being discontinued? 

115 responses total.

To add to this, there is at least one free alternative to dialing in to
Grex if we were to remove the phone lines.  For example, freedialup.org.

In the March 2010 Board meeting minutes, it is noted that (via a script
we used to use a long time ago which was run during the meeting to see
how much usage there was) there was 24 minutes of modem use in February.
This is practically nothing of all the hours of modem time available
that month (roughly 40,000 minutes in 28 days for one modem and twice
that for two modems--about 0.03 percent usage recorded).  We should be
able to run that script again and see what the usage was in March. I
don't know if we can go back in time, say 6 months to see if there is
any pattern to the usage.  Staff can tell us more about that.

If we do stop modem service to Grex, we should do at least a couple
things.  One is to warn people in advance so they can investigate the
alternatives and try them out.  Another is to publicize at least one
viable alternative for those who still use modems.  If we can give good
instructions on how to use that alternative, so much the better.

If we know who the modem users are, perhaps an e-mail could be sent
to them with this information, but at the very least, having the
information about the impending end of modem connections and the
alternative(s) should be in the MOTD and an agora conference item
in advance of the shutoff date.

www.dialinfree.net is another free dial-in service, which has numbers
in Michigan.  There are others around the country, often limited to
regional area codes (such as freedialup.org).

It's really a waste of money to keep them going for one or two users,
unless those users want to pay the bill. :)  Even if the bill is as low
as $50/mo, for 24 minutes that's over $2/minute we're paying for someone
to connect to grex. :)

At one point, I'm sure we had enough people using them and enough
membership money coming in to cover the cost.  But this is obviously no
longer the case.  Since we have practically no money coming in right
now, it would make good sense to reduce expenses where we can reasonably
do so.  And of course, we'd like to do as little harm to meeting our
mission as possible while reducing expenses.

At one time having just 2 lines would have produced 100% busy signals
too, but that time was about 15 years ago. :)

  
please   LINK  t o agora !!
  

  
keepoing one line, 'just because' would be a decent idea, imo, 
  
i might be luddite-ish to do so, but, teh learning curve starts ther.e
  

I suspect that dialing in via a modem is a learning curve very very few
undertake any more.  

The Board has a responsibility to not waste money if we can reasonably
avoid it. 'Just because' doesn't sound to me like a good rationale
for spending money in this case, especially when there are dial-in
alternatives for people.  They can get on the learning curve that way if
they desire to do so.

I agree and would support their being discontinued as soon as fair warning 
has been issued.  I put a pointer to this item in the MOTD this morning.

Thanks for the MOTD update, Mary.  Do we also want to link this to agora
since not everyone reads coop?

Yes, Katie has to do that.  I'll send her email.

Thanks, Katie!

I am one of the last modem users.  It is quicker to boot into DOS and use
kermit to access grex, and it responds faster than if I go via dialinfree,
but I vote to drop the lines.  I can't use DOS with a PCI modem anyway and
I have a whole bunch of computers without ISA slots now.

I say if Sindi Keesan says drop the lines, the lines should be dropped!

I saw my modem the other day. I don't think it will work with any computer
I now use....and I'm not going to waste my time trying to make it work.

It might be wise to keep one line.

My external modems work with all my computers but there are some newer models
without serial ports now.

  
ok, dump both.

I agree.

resp:14 Yeah, that was my thought too. ;)

Keep the phone lines.  Dump Grex.

Keep grex, dump twits.

What if grex's 'net server goes down and it is off the internet for a 
time.  it happens.  If the 'net is down and there are no phone lines, 
grex would be totally inaccessible.  

The probabiliy of Grex's connection to the Internet going down is extremely
small compared to the probability of Grex itself going down (which happens
every once in a while). When Grex itself is down phone lines can't do much,
unless they are used to remotely power cycle or debug for which I doubt Grex
has the required hardware. Just saying from the technical point of view. I
don't think I get a say in keeping or ditching the phone lines in question.

Right.  During the recent several-week outage, the phone lines did
nothing that I know of to help the situation (and we had to pay for a
month of their use to boot).  There has been prior discussion of getting
the hardware (card) that would allow remote reboots.  It's not expensive
and might save staff time going to the co-lo to do the work.  But we do
have more staff members with access to where Grex's machine is located
and they have expressed a willingness to go there and get it going again
if it needs a reboot.  

If the 'net connection' is down, getting to grex by telephone line won't
do a lot of good: there won't be anyone here to talk to.

Grex has already decided to discontinue dial up connections.  They decided
that wen they:  1.) failed to upgrade the old 14.4k modems (who's going to
connect at 14.4k anymore.  and  2.)  installed a new system where dial up file
transfer is slower and more difficult.

really, if you're still using dial-up to connect to grex you're doing
something wrong.  There's just no reason not to use another ISP and
telnet/ssh/browser here.

Direct dial connections even at 14.4K are better than ssh/telnet connections
via dialup connection to ISP.  Also I can print screen via DOS but not linux.

By the way, Bill Levak tested out a bunch of faster modems for grex, which
grex never bothered to set up and use.  

I find it annoying when people insist that their way of doing things is always
best under all circumstances.

would more people dial in if grex decided to keep the dialins and 
decided to buy the faster modems?  

The faster modems are free, we already have them but nobody bothered to take
Bill there to install them.

Re 30: I doubt it.  Modems are pretty much gone at a lot of places.  UM
dropped them years back due to rapidly declining use.  If people have
access to reasonably priced broadband they usually go for it.  Or else
they go with a dial-in ISP and then come in via the Internet.  There
is always the potential cost of long-distance (depending on your phone
plan) if you dial-in directly from out of the area.  So it's probably
mostly local calls making the dial-in.  You really don't need all that
fast a modem to do command line Grex at a reasonable speed.  Likely,
those dialing in accepted what they were given in terms of modem speed
without questioning it (with at least one exception).

I doubt we want to promote modem usage at this point for both
maintenance and budget reasons.

Reminds me of the guy in Hangover asking if his pager will work in the casino

Re: #27
What is this "new system where dial up file transfer is slower and more
difficult"?  What was the old system?

resp:29 "I find it annoying when people insist that their way of doing
things is always best under all circumstances."

Uh, hey pot?  It's for you; Kettle's calling.

it might be wise to keep one line

For what, I wonder?

Connecting to a computer system via a telephone line is a self-limiting phenomenon. The more time passes, the fewer persons there are who would be willing to do so, even if they had both the equipment and the knowledge to do so. Unless the purpose is to maintain an intentionally archaic technology (which would be completely incompatible with the goal of operating a community with any commonality other than a strong interest in a very specific archaic technology), there is no logical justification for keeping a direct dial-up connection available.

There is no wisdom in keeping a direct dial-up connection to Grex. I even doubt there is any wisdom in keeping Grex hosted directly on a hardware platform when it's capabilities compared to those of modern commodity hardware suggest that Grex should exist in an entirely virtualized machine environment.

There, I said it. If Grex is to be maintained, set it up as a virtual machine hosted on a contract basis with a company who will provide and maintain the hardware and the connectivity, and allow Grex users and staff to customize the inside of the virtual environment unendingly without having to worry about phonelines, dying disk drives, i/o capacities, etc. Backups of the entire system could be simple and automated, and downtime would be practically nonexistent.

(where's the 'like' button?)  ;-)

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