We are considering enabling PPP on Grex's dial-in lines. What this means
is that people could either dial in the same way they do now, or they could
create dial-up PPP connections to Grex just as they do with commerical ISPs.
The difference would be that this PPP connection would allow only access to
Grex (and perhaps a few other sites), not to the whole Internet.
After making a dial-up PPP connection to Grex, you could use all the standard
internet tools, but only to talk to Grex. You could log in to Grex via
telnet. You could use Netscape to look at web pages on Grex or to read the
conferences via backtalk. You could use ftp to transfer files between your
computer and Grex. You could do all of these at the same time. This would
most likely be a much nicer interface to Grex than a normal dial-up
connection.
We can do all this with the hardware we have on hand. We probably want to
do a little new software development but not much.
Issues:
- Grex and HVCN have a relationship in which Grex is considered the
main dial-in provider for HVCN. Currently this doesn't mean much,
but we can easily set things up so that dial-up PPP users would be
able to access stuff on hvcn.org as well as stuff on cyberspace.org,
but still couldn't access any other sites on the net.
We could also add selected other sites to the list, like maybe the
washtenaw county pages or the Ann Arbor Public Library pages or whatever.
My feeling is that we should probably only do that if we have some
kind of relationship with that site, as we do with HVCN. I could imagine
making deals like allowing access to arborweb if they will run ads for
us.
- Members probably wouldn't get any special treatment here. If a member
wants to telnet to xyz.org, then they could telnet to Grex and then
from Grex telnet to xyz.org, but they couldn't telnet direct to xyz.org.
Similarly, any user can access any web page by telneting to Grex and
then using lynx on Grex to view the page they want to see. This is
weird, but what the heck.
- Any attempts to connect to any site not on our list would fail. We
don't want to be a free ISP. We can probably set it up so that it will
show some page we design if you try to follow a web page link to an
address outside our net. Probably this page would tell about how to
telnet in and run lynx if you want to access things outside Grex on the
net.
- There is some question of how we want to handled E-mail. We could just
have people telnet in and run pine or whatever as they do now. Or we
could set up a POP server that would work only for people on our dial-in
ports so they could actually use Eudora or any other mail client on there
machine to send and receive internet mail.
Some staff members felt that free POP mail would be such a popular service
that all our dial-in lines would be jammed all the time with E-mail users,
and this would prevent the lines from being used by people who actually
want to use Grex. Other's felt that this would be very desirable
community service and might not be as big a hit as all that.
- There would probably have to be something like a 15 minute idle timeout
on these connections.
- It's likely that doing this would pressure us to upgrade the modems we
now have from 14.4 to something faster.
- Likely this isn't going to be easy for new users to set up. Our current
hardware doesn't seem to support automatic configuration, so users will
have to set DNS addresses and such stuff manually.
43 responses total.
Maybe this could be tried on a couple of lines for some period of time, to see if any unforeseen problems appear, and to make sure people will be able to get access as they currently do. Maybe no one will really use a Grex PPP connection. Maybe a lot of people will. My guess would be that most people won't be interested; if they can make a PPP connection, they will probably make it to their ISP. But I've been wrong before -- only when I was younger, not since I've reached the age I've presently attained -- and I don't really know. I think this is worth a try.
I agree with jep. Let's give it a try and see how it goes.
I do not currently dial into grex, and haven't for about a year. However, I would dial direct to grex if I could get a PPP connection. The reason has to do with what clients I need to use to telnet, and what I need to use to dial. I think this is a very good idea, because it makes dialing to grex much more like dialing to the rest of the world. I also feel that POP would be a very bad idea. My 2 cents.
On the subject of POP, I think it should be opened up and offered as a service along with every other service Grex offers. I wouldn't offer it exclusively to those on Grex PPP lines, though. I'd just open it up and offer it to anyone. The fear of Grex being overrun by mail-only users is paranoia.
Do you have *any* idea what % of grex users *already* use grex *just* for e-mail?
I would support any improvement in Grex's services which did not require further hardware upgrades at present. Let us have some time to regroup and evaluate after the upgrade to the new machine before we go about spending more money on hardware. Definitely keep an eye toward the future, and file the hardware upgrade parts of these ideas away, but remember, we're not here to struggle to keep pace with technology, just to provide access to it.
I feel that POP service via PPP would actually decrease the utilization of our modems, and thus would allow us to support more users. POP would encourage users to read and compose mail offline. For myself, most of my online time is spent in BBS. If it were possible to download the new posts and read them offline, we'd get far more utilization of our modem pool.
Yes, Marcus, I have some idea. I don't see it as a problem. I don't think Grex has to turn away users of the conferencing system, or party, or anything else because of the mail users. Perhaps POP connections should be limited like telnet connections are limited, but I think POP is a feature which should be permitted.
I'm on the fence on the issue of POP. Conventional staff wisdom is that it would be be a bad thing because it would attract hordes more users who would use Grex only as a mail drop. But the fact is that there are already hordes of users who do that. And in the absence of POP service, those users are forced to tie up the telnet ports while doing their mail, making telnet less available to people who want to use Grex for other purposes. How much of a contribution is this to the long telnet queues, I wonder. Enabling POP also has the potential to lighten the staff workload. We wouldn't have to deal as much with users having trouble getting mail clients like Pine to work right, since they wouldn't be using Grex mail clients in the first place. I lean toward trying POP for a while and seeing what the effects are. If it doesn't work out, we can always disable it.
What is the feasibility of allowing people to browse to "non-approved" sites with graphics disabled? Would that be a more intensive use of system resources than lynx? This sounds like a very good idea. Run with it.
Pop isn't a service you can "limit", like telnet. The service model of pop is that clients connect, pull down mail, and disconnect. "Limiting" pop service is about as hard as "limiting" web service. The only real limit that's possible is machine limitations - arbitrarily refusing sessions, etc. The things that currently limit mail usage on grex are a bit more subtle. Certainly, some people don't want to wait through the queue. There are also certainly people of people who want full graphics GUI's, and find even the limited ascii-only keyboard-driven GUI of pine to be undesirable. So, of the *large* population of people out there who want free e-mail, only a relatively tiny fraction find grex to be worth their while. If we offered free pop mail, however, this *would* change, drastically. There are millions of people out there who know all about configuring pop mail clients. Even if we only got a tiny fraction of them, say, a hundred thousand users - what do you think this will do to grex? Keep in mind that these people are not going to be using the computer conferences.
This would be bad.
I'm skeptical that the dire scenario that Marcus outlines in #11 would happen to Grex, considering that it hasn't happened to M-Net, which has been offering free POP service to the world for several years now.
I'm heitant about POP mail, too. If it were possible to limit it to n sessions at a time as we do with telnet, so that other lines were available for real grexing, I'd be much happier about it. Then again, if m-net has been offering it for years without trouble, it may be worth giving it a three month trial to see what happens. If POP mail starts to hogs the majority of the lines to the detriment of Grexers actually grexing, then how hard is it to pull the plug?
I'd like to see it on a trial basis.
I believe that M-net stopped offering POP about two years ago. I could be wrong about this. In any case, they were offering it to all internet users. I *thought* we were talking about offering it only to dial-up PPP users. We probably won't get 100,000 dialup PPP user in the Ann Arbor area. But we could get lots.
i heard that the m-net password file got erased once because of a buggy popd
If POP can't be limited at all, then it would not be a good idea to offer it. There's no way to limit the number of concurrent POP connections, Marcus? I find that surprising. I wasn't suggesting POP only through direct dial-up connections, I was suggesting POP as an inbound Internet user service with the same standing as conferencing, party, and all of the rest of Grex's services. I'm not talking about encouraging people to use it, or becoming like hotmail.com, but Internet e-mail is part of what Grex is here to provide, and people who use it are Grexers just as much as I am. I think POP is a more efficient way to provide it than making people telnet in to get their e-mail. POP-only users would be reaped if they don't log in, like anyone else who creates an account but doesn't log in. That might encourage people to stop by and see what Grex is about. My view is, that would be a bonus, it's not the purpose of offering POP. The purpose of offering POP is to give people a service they can use.
awhile back on nether.net i made popd log when folks popped in and out, and write the appropriate entries, so it would say "last logged in on pop3"
Sure you can "limit" the # of pop sessions. It just doesn't do any
good: pop clients connect, do their thing, and disconnect - so the
system gets real slow long before you start seeing overlapping pop
clients, and the only way to "limit" pop service would be basically to
make it look "broken" - ie, refuse some % of connect attempts. I'd
expect users of such pop clients would find it easy enough to generate
retries--press the "inc" button again, or whatever, such that even this
might not be much of an obstacle to the determined pop user.
So far as I can see: m-net does not provide pop access:
% telnet m-net.arbornet.org 109
Trying 209.142.209.161...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
I think one point of confusion here is whether we're talking about
*INTERNET WIDE* pop access, or *DIAL-UP ONLY* pop access. When I'm
talking about millions of potential pop users, I'm definitely talking
about internet-wide access. This is the same territory as hotmail,
juno, etc. I really don't think we want to go there. On the other
hand, for dial-up only access, we're really only talking about the Ann
Arbor area - many of these people already enjoy better access elsewhere
(umich, icnet, emu, etc.) and the total # of people is much smaller. So
the resulting demand for grex should be a *lot* smaller than the
internet at large. Since we would almost certainly be locking those
users into only accessing grex (& perhaps hvcn) they are much more
likely to become involved in grex itself, and perhaps even become paying
members, if they aren't already. Providing pop access for these people,
only, is certainly a much more feasible project.
I probably misunderstood, but was the suggestion that nobody could dial in to grex and access the web, even paying members? I have no other way to reach the Web besides grex and am happy with things the way they are.
Marcus was testing pop2 services, not pop3:
punk:~> telnet arbornet.org 110
Trying 209.142.209.161...
Connected to arbornet.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
+OK QUALCOMM Pop server derived from UCB (version 2.1.4-R3) at
m-net.arbornet.org starting. quit +OK Pop server at m-net.arbornet.org signing
off. Connection closed by foreign host. punk:~> grep pop /etc/services pop3pw
106/tcp 3com-tsmux #Eudora compatible PW changer pop2
109/tcp postoffice #Post Office Protocol - Version 2 pop2
109/udp postoffice #Post Office Protocol - Version 2 pop3
110/tcp #Post Office Protocol - Version 3 pop3 110/udp #Post
Office Protocol - Version 3
Re #21: Nobody is suggesting removal of any currently available services.
Right. You could still do exactly what you are doing now, without change. You would have the new option of dialing into Grex using a PPP program instead of the comm program you use now. In that case you would be creating a full network connection between your computer and Grex. You could use internet client programs like telnet, ftp, netscape, or internet explorer on your computer to access Grex and HVCN. However, the browser running on your computer could only access Grex and HVCN. If you wanted to access web pages on other sites, you could telnet from your computer to Grex, and then run lynx on Grex to access any web page on the net, just as you can now.
I still do not believe that ppp connections on grex's modems is a good thing. it's just going to lead to someone setting up a proxy of some sort on grex, etc.. to bypass these restrictions, or make it possible for someone to dial into grex and send a few thousand spam e-mails
re #24, I cannot telnet from anywhere to grex, I can only telnet from grex to somewhere else, as I have no other ISP besides grex. I will be very upset if I cannot continue to dial in to grex (by phone) and access websites. I have accessed a lot of websites in connection with the bbs conferences. I If I could only access websites via grex by telnetting, I would have to pay for some way to telnet to grex rather than using this money to donate to grex (I have let my M-net account lapse and given the extra money to grex instead). Please do no assume that everyone can telnet to grex, or use backtalk.
Once again, keesan, we *are not* going to take away anything we currently have.
Thanks, I will stop worrying about it and keep supporting grex. (Just don't assume that everyone telnets to grex, the phrasing worried me.)
Jared raises some valid concerns. We spent quite a bit of time discussing them at the staff meeting. I'm not overly worried about somebody setting up a proxy server on Grex. The kernel blocks should prevent that. Using Grex as a spam relay is a much more serious concern. I'm hoping Marcus will make some changes to sendmail to limit how much mail can be relayed off the SMTP server from the dial-ups to some reasonable amount, which should catch mass mailings and stop them. If not, I would not support offering POP/SMTP access from the dial-up PPP connections.
Keesan, if grex were to set up ppp on the dial in lines, you would still have the choice of connecting the way you do now as has been pointed out. You would also be able to configure your computer to initiate a PPP connection to grex's terminal server and then telnet from your PC to grex. No other ISP would be needed. Just some software on your PC including TCP/IP stack, PPP dialer and telnet client. All of those come with Windows 95 and are available for older versions of Windows but probably not for DOS)
<a little...slight drift> re 30: web-spyder supposedly works for dos...but I never got it to work <sorry...back to the regularly scheduled discussion>
Something that ought to be pointed out regarding mail on m-net, is that m-net has had a number of serious bungle-ups with their mail software. (I seem to remember at *least* one 3-month outage, of internet mail.) That means many people who might otherwise be using m-net for mail, have gone elsewhere. One of the comments we've consistently gotten from people who use grex, is that they use and like grex because mail is particularly reliable for them here. Most of those users are non-m-net folk, so that means grex is enjoying the positive side of a reputation and m-net the negative side. That, in turn, means comparing mail experience between m-net & grex is something like comparing apples and peas. They may both be sweet fruits, but that's about where the similarities end. Someone could spam the internet today by using newuser to create an anonymous account, then running "mail" from a shell script a few thousand times. If this became a problem, then we'd have to get caller-ID, and perhaps deal with the FBI or other law enforcement bodies. Fortunately, internet spammers work differently - and grex is not a particularly attractive vehicle for most spammers to use when there are so many more attractive bases of operation. One of the thoughts we did have regarding making "ppp" not so attractive for spammers, was to require the use of passwords when using "ppp". So far as a "proxy server" goes, the proxy server would be bound by the same internet access rights that the person would normally have from grex. If they're not a member, the proxy server wouldn't be able to make smtp connections elsewhere. If they are, then the proxy server could indeed be used to access elsewhere on the the internet - just as the person could have done before by running that application directly on grex. I could be wrong, but I just somehow doubt many members would care to do this.
Plus proxy servers would be relatively easy to detect and kill.
I'd like to point out that M-Net _does_ have pop3 - as Grey installed
the Pop3 patch I wrote, (and caught a teeny logic-bug ;-).
It's working fine and has SERIOUSLY cleared up the trouble we were
having: users checking for mail _far_ too often; and, users that are
both forwarding AND using pop3..
The patch has a #define for a time-limit (currently at 15 minutes).
What it does is:
1) Look at the users homedir for a .forward - summary abort if
found (disallow pop3 if user also forwards);
2) Look at the pop3-file - summary abort if it's YOUNGER than the
programmed time "window".
That's it.. In one day, we cleared a megaload of pop3 mail, and the
total of pop3 mail now hovers around 74 blocks at any given time.
Ask Grey for more mail-info - I just wrote a logical patch.
Oh, drat - sorry to dual post...
Note: it took me a day to puzzle out the proper place to embed
the tests - it's a simple once-line patch once the 'slapper' is
compiled..
sorry, 'bout that.
I haven't put this subject on the board agenda. I felt that it needs more discussion before the board tries to make a call on it.
M-Net's mail problem was 2 years ago. Both M-Net and Grex have such
a high churn rate for non-members that I really doubt that a mail outage
that long ago would have any effect now on people's perceptions.
Grex has a much higher number of users than M-Net has, but
a smaller number of *conferencers* and lower activity in the conferences
than M-Net. So Grex has a much heavier e-mail load than M-Net.
I like the idea of a PPP trial period!
The whole idea makes me nervous, but I think at this point if staff felt it could be controlled to keep us from becoming a "hotmail/juno" clone, I'd vote for a trial period. It would be convenient...
(In my experience, Grex is much higher profile than M-Net. That would explain the larger user base and higher percentage of mail users, because the vaste majority of people on the internet want email but not conferences.)
I am strongly in favor of trying out local PPP services as an experiment. I don't expect us to be overrun with local users, but I think it could increase telephone line usage somewhat. I would very much like to see POP supported over that service. It would be best if it were done from a machine dedicated to serving POP and perhaps other mail-related functions. I am fence-sitting on the internet-wide POP issue. I don't really believe in the doomsday scenario, and it does have certain advantages over what we are doing now. I wouldn't hear of it, even as an experiment, until mail processing were done on a separate box. Once we're in that state, I am still a bit uncertain, but lean towards trying it.
.....zoundz, was janc reading my mind jsut before entering this item? seriously, i was talking about experiiemtning with this ... and then there is this item? did i mentions something on the street corner when dadroc and you and valerie and i sighted each other?
This has been something staff has been talking about for a year or so.
about the same amout of time i have been talking to myself about this potential. hmmmmmmmm.
You have several choices: