Mark asked me to run new statistics on dial-in line usage. Here's what we've got for the last three months: Usage between Fri Aug 1 00:00:00 2003 and Sun Aug 31 23:59:59 2003 lines hours percent 0: 474.82 63.87% 1: 204.68 27.53% 2: 53.76 7.23% 3: 9.27 1.25% 4: 0.84 0.11% 5: 0.04 0.01% 6: 0.00 0.00% Usage between Tue Jul 1 00:00:00 2003 and Thu Jul 31 23:59:59 2003 0: 418.32 56.44% 1: 220.05 29.69% 2: 84.79 11.44% 3: 15.49 2.09% 4: 2.45 0.33% 5: 0.14 0.02% 6: 0.00 0.00% Usage between Sun Jun 1 00:00:00 2003 and Mon Jun 30 23:59:59 2003 0: 385.93 53.67% 1: 240.82 33.49% 2: 72.35 10.06% 3: 15.98 2.22% 4: 3.62 0.50% 5: 0.36 0.05% 6: 0.01 0.00% So in the last three months there was less than a minute when all six of Grex's current dialin lines were in use. The real question is whether we cut to three lines or four lines. So over the last three months, the totals with various numbers of lines would have been 6 lines: 0 minutes of busy tones 0.00% chance of busy 5 lines: <1 minute of busy tones 0.00% chance of busy 4 lines: 33 minutes of busy tones 0.02% chance of busy 3 lines: 7 hours, 27 minutes of busy tones 0.34% chance of busy Note the decimal point in the percentages. At three lines, we'd expect that if a user calls in at a random time, then there would be one chance in 300 of getting a busy tone. In practice, people don't call in at random times, but are more likely to call in at busy times, so the chances of a busy tone would be higher than that.95 responses total.
Listen, the only reason we keep the dial-in lines around is to satisfy people's nostalgic taste for a genuine dial-up BBS. I don't see why we don't just remove all but one line, in order to emulate, nostalgically, the actual fun people had dialing-up genuine dial-up BBSs. We'd save money AND improve service.
Thanks Jan. Grex's Centrex contract is due to expire in October. I called Ameritech and asked for quotes on how much it would cost us to stay on Centrex, and how much it would cost to switch to a regular trunk-hunt system. I had to augment the information they sent with some charges not included (911 charges and federal taxes), but I think I got everything. The results are: What we pay now: $20.00 overhead for Centrex $19.81 per line -------- $158.15 Total for 7 lines What we'd pay if we committed to a new Centrex contract for 36 months, with a minimum of 2 lines: $20.00 overhead for Centrex $21.55 per line -------- $170.85 Total for 7 lines What we'd pay if we dump Centrex and switch to a regular trunk-hunt system: $22.73 per line -------- $159.10 Total for 7 lines So even if we kept all 7 lines, it would make sense to drop to a regular trunk line. And the more lines we drop, the more we'll save. The woman I talked to swore there would be no installation charges either way. Unfortunately, the quotes she sent me do talk about installation charges, but that's understandable, since no doubt the software that prints out quotes is not equipped to deal with our special situation. Still, I wish I had it in writing that it won't cost us anything to switch.
dah, the dial-up lines are there because we really do have people who use dial-up. I won't try to guess or explain why they use dial-up, but they do. (FWIW, I technically use dial-up: PPP over an ISDN connection, just not to grex.)
I don't think there's anyone who really does NEED to use dial-up, and besides my plan will allow the VERY odd people who need to use dial-up to use dial-up.
It doesn't matter what you, or I, think of their needs; *they* think they need it, so they do. As the statistics show, one line won't supply the demand.
No, and that's the point: We'll have less supply than demand, which will give us more nostalgia and more money.
Grex is not in business to make money. Grex is, among other things, a charity. A large part of our charitable mission is to provide some minimal internet access to people in the Ann Arbor area, and we need dialin lines to do that. Of course, that doesn't mean we're in the business of subsidizing the phone company, either. We should adjust the number of lines we have to agree with the demand for them.
Mark, when in October can we make a change or drop our Centrex contract? I guess what I'm wondering is if the board needs to vote on this tonight or whether we'd be having another meeting before the target date. My feeling on reading this through, once, is that we drop to three lines. Do we still have a staff only dialin line? Do we need that? How do those *who dial in* feel about our dropping to three available phone lines?
Re 5: Please don't feed the troll.
I could live with 3 lines, but I'm pretty sure that getting busy signals would quickly extinguish my behavior of hopping on Grex on a whim. The "hassle" of finding a time when I could be sure of getting on would probably lead to not trying. Rather than several times a day, I'd probably be on several times a week.
I believe she said our Centrex contract runs out on October 20th. I'm sorry I didn't get this data up earlier. But I do think we should make a decision on keeping or dropping Centrex at the meeting tonight. It seems like a pretty easy decision to me: for a small number of lines, a trunk hunt is cheaper than Centrex. We've never used the intercom features that make Centrex valuable for certain businesses, so it really doesn't offer us any advantages that I see.
I dial up, and I think going to 3 lines would be fine.
I realized there is an error in #2: we pay $19.74 per line now, not $19.81.
I'm not too hung up on the "three or four lines" question. I think eventually we will no longer have dialin lines (or perhaps only one), but I expect they'll be gradually phased out as they get less and less use. I think that for now having dialin lines fits with Grex's mission of being accessable to low-income people.
This staff member feels no need for a staff line. I haven't used it to dial in in years. It is nice to be able to phone people in the pumpkin, and phone out from the pumpkin, but most staff members have cell phones and you could dial out on one of the modem lines. Getting off centrex seems a no brainer. It gives us no advantages, costs more, and limits our ability to reduce our lines as needed. Cutting dial-in lines seems a no brainer too. They really aren't being used. I think the questions that need thinking about are (1) cut down to three dial lines or two dial-in lines? and (2) cut out the staff line? The other thing to think about is whether we can afford to bump up our DSL speed.
I don't have numbers worked out, but my sense is that we are currently living beyond our means. So I don't think we should consider bumping up our DSL speed until 1) We get on the new machine, and are assured that the DSL line, not the CPU, is the biggest bottleneck, and 2) We get some more members. But, I'll be happy to work up some income/expense numbers for the October meeting so we can be more analyticl about answering that question. I don't have time to do it for tonight. I've been wondering if we need the staff line as well. The theory was always that if some vandal took over Grex and made it impossible to telnet in, the staff could dial in and fix things. Is that really something that might happen these days? $20/month seems like a lot to pay for that insurance, if it's not really a practical solution to an attack. I was thinking, based on Jan's numbers, that we should cut back to either 3 or 4 publicly-accessible dialin lines.
I'd be fine with 3 or 4 dial-up lines.
I'm inclined to go with 4, to keep the busy time to less than a minute per month on average, primarily because of cmcgee's reasoning. We can always drop another later.
I'm also inclined to four lines. The jump from 0.02% to 0.34% is a big (!) one, from thirty-three minutes to more than seven hours of busy signals.
Does dial-in usage tend to rise in the fall & winter? (Students back, fewer warm & sunny hours to play outside, etc.)
Students all have much faster ways to connect to Grex than through dialup. The board voted last night to drop Centrex, drop to 4 dialin lines, and drop the staff line.
Just out of curiousity, how much will this save us per month?
Never mind, just saw the answer in the board meeting minutes item.
We should be paying approximately $70/month less than we pay now.
I would go for three lines. 7 hours/month of busy signals, even if it were all at the same time every day, would still only be 15 minutes maximum wait (and I cannot imagine the business is always at the same time).
I think that was seven hours of busy signal over *three* months. The consensus was we'll drop to four now and then evaluate how it's going for those dialing in. We can drop additional lines, without charge, but there is a $42 fee to add a line. I think I've got that right.
Yup, that's right.
I hope this isn't the beginning of the end for dialup. I don't imagine I'll ever use dialup unless i actually move to Michigan (unlikely, since I'm presently firmly rooted in the UK, or at least the EU), but they're handy for people who live in Michigan and want to connect when there's a wait for an Internet line. I do support the idea of reducing the number of lines, though, since some seem never to be used; not much point in disagreeing, now that it seems to be a fait accompli :-).
(Board actions can be overruled by the membership. The Board can also be convinced to change its own decisions. It ain't over 'til it's over. ;)
They're more than handy for people who want to avoid the telnet queue. There are a number of people who have no other internet access.
No wonder jp2 asked about this on m-net.
I know. I mentioned it.
I haven't actually seen a telnet queue in a long time. Are they still common?
I've been put it in occasionally, over the past month. I don't know why, though: when I get on, the actual usage is pretty reasonable. Right now, we have "0 waiting, 28 remote + 2 local users; 72 max remote users".
It should be noted that the limit on telnet connections is entirely artificial, based on the number of users the staff feel Grex can reasonably support at a time. Reducing the number of people who can connect via dial-up lines should presumably therefore increase the number of people allowed to simultaniously telnet in, by an equal amount.
That's assuming that telnet users and dial-in users see the same throughput and delay and present equal loads.
The argument could easily be made that dial-up users use more bandwidth than network users.
Re 37: No. You need to spend some time on the vandal-smacking patrol to understand where the bandwidth goes.
ahahahaha
You misunderstood me. Actually, the fault is mine; I was unclear. It could be argued that dialup users create more system overhead than if they connected via the network (the cost of handling serial interupts is high).
That's what the terminal server is for, to handle serial interrupts. So far as grex is concerned, the system and network load is virtually the same whether people go through dialup connections or the internet. But the network load we care the most about is not what grex sees, but just past the router on the DSL line.
The "serial interrupts" argument might have been true back years ago when we were still using the multiport serial card. I vaguely recall that Marcus and STeve would occasionally argue that point. The current situation is that modem users connect to our terminal server, which then gives them a telnet connection to Grex. Regardless of how the modems connect, it's never been the modem users who download eggdrop/bitchx/etc, using up network, disk, CPU, and staff resources.
Good point! I'd forgotten about the terminal server.
OK, I called Ameritech and told them to implement the motions the board passed at the last meeting, as of the date our contract ends, which is October 21st. Specifically: 1) Drop the Centrex system and return to a POTS system. 2) Drop 761-3554, 761-3596, and 761-7541. 3) Keep 761-300, 761-5041, 761-3411, and 761-3451, and put a hunt on them, in that order. I asked whether there were any features on those lines that we could drop, line touch-tone dialing. The answer was that there was nohing we could do to reduce the base price, because all of their calling plans are geared toward people who make outgoing calls, and we don't make any. I forgot to ask about any kind of circular hunting. I realized I didn't quite understand that - is the hunt supposed to give up on a line that's ringing open after a certain number of rings, and move on to the next one? That sounds fancier than what a POTS system can handle. My gut feeling is that we'd already given them enough to do anyway, and the chances are already high that they will screw something up. So let's wait and get this change taken care of, and then if we want to add something else, do it later. The changes should take place on the morning of Tuesday the 21st. We may experience a disruption in service, but hopefully it will be short.
When we added Centrex we also got a new feature where an unanswered line would move on to the next line in the trunk hunt, after 2-3 rings (settable - nephi was our Centrex guy and could make changes). Before that long-time Grexers would keep a list of phone numbers in case a modem wasn't responding. We've always had trunk hunt, where a busy line would bump up to the next line when needed.
OK, I get it. We should be back to the old system now. Since there are only 4 lines, it should be easier than before to cycle through them manually, if necessary.
Are the first four lines shown by !phones the ones which we have left?
Yes.
re #41: yet the in-band file transfer protocols are still disabled for all but dial-up sessions, with an explanation that no longer `fits'.
What do you mean by "in-band file transfer protocols", malymi?
Probably kermit and zmodem.
indeed, kermit and x/y/z-modem. a large datagram presented to telnetd has no more significant system overhead than one presented to ftpd.
kermit and z/y/z-modem weren't designed to be used in telnet sessions. Use FTP, if you have a telnet connection.
They weren't designed that way, it's true, but that doesn't preclude their use. Personally, I see no reason not to allow kermit and [xyz]modem over telnet (or any other interactive login service). If I'm not mistaken, zmodem at least was designed to run over a packet switched network, and I know kermit was designed to transfer files over a statically connected network (pardon the loose usage of terms). In particular, kermit was designed to transfer files between a PDP-10 mainframe running TOPS-20 and a PC in a `directly connected' computer lab.
Discouragement of kermit and x/y/zmodem on Grex was done at at time when Grex's internet bandwidth was orders of magnitude less than it is now. Ftp was noticeably more efficient. Now that we have a faster connection, maybe it's time to revisit the issue. Appropriate topic for the next staff meeting.
Well, our Centrex contract ended today, and Ameritech was supposed to drop three of our phone lines. I just called them, and they haven't been dropped yet. If they're still there in a couple of days, I'll call and hassle them.
Ahh, good old Ameriwreck...
Well, I called our lines just now, and indeed 3554, 3596, and 7541 have been disconnected. 3000, 5041, 3411, and 3451 are still up, so it looks like everything went as requested, only a day late. We'll see when we get the bill, of course, but so far so good.
and teh hunt group works JustFine (tm) ?
It does now, so far as we know. SBC had not included 3000 in the group at first, but that was fixed on the following Monday, IIRC, and tested at the BoD meeting.
Right, as far as I know everything's working fine. We haven't received the November bill yet. When we do we'll find out if everything's really all right.
I received the phone bill today, and as I feared, they charged us an installation charge on our four lines. $42 each. I made two different employees promise me they weren't going to do that, so I'll be on the phone tomorrow morning trying to sort it out.
I called the old number I used to call to get help with our phone system, and was told that now that we aren't on Centrex, we have been transferred to another department. So I spoke with Beverly in the new department. (I think it's called Industrial Information Services, or something like that.) Beverly told me to write a letter disputing the installation charges, naming names of the employees who told me we wouldn't be charged, and fax it to them. She said people who work with a project manager on transfers usually don't get charged installation fees - so whether one is obliged to pay for installation seems to depend on who you know. I do have the full name of one employee who told me there would be no installation charges, and the first name of the other, with the dates I talked to them. Hopefully that will be enough to get a reversal. I'm pretty pissed off about this situation. I did all I could short of demanding a promise in writing, and I doubt that would have worked.
You're a good and generous person, Mark. Thanks for doing this.
I faxed off a letter to SBC yesterday, requesting a reversal of the installation charges.
I called SBC to check that our fax was received, and in fact it was. It has been assigned to a billing dispute person. Turnaround time is about 1 month.
I got a fax back from Ameritech today, and while not admitting they did anything wrong, they did agree to "adjust" the charges that appeared on our November bill. So we should be getting a credit of $168 on our next bill. That should mean that our December bill will be $0, and our January bill will be around $12. In February we'll be back to paying $90/month.
Wow. Nice, Mark.
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I don't know. You tell us Jamie ;)
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Thanks for sorting this Mark.
Re #69: Because they have a monopoly, and they don't have to care what we think. They do have to care what the Michigan Public Service Commission thinks, though, so they do just enough that we can't complain to them. I'll take it. :)
Thanks for your efforts mark!
Thanks, Mark!
Great work, Mark!
Nice job, mark!
Amazing stuff, Mark!
Mark, on the mark, Mark!
Mark, you make marking a mark to remember.
OK, I got the phone bill for December, and indeed our account has been credited $168. So that's the end of the Centrex chapter of Grex. :)
May it rest in peace.
See ya later, Centrex!
*Plays taps on her trumpet*
September 2004 ========================= Users Hours Percent 0: 498.63 70.00% 1: 175.76 24.68% 2: 32.86 4.61% 3: 4.54 0.64% 4: 0.50 0.07% October 2004 ========================= Users Hours Percent 0: 511.47 68.83% 1: 190.18 25.59% 2: 35.49 4.78% 3: 5.89 0.79% 4: 0.01 0.00% November 2004 ========================= Users Hours Percent 0: 500.20 70.07% 1: 169.06 23.68% 2: 39.35 5.51% 3: 5.17 0.72% 4: 0.07 0.01% I think two lines would be sufficient.
I'm afraid that I must agree with janc, given those numbers.
Thanks so much for the data, Jan. I agree that two lines sounds right.
Yep, even us intrepid dialers can read the numbers.
Looks like 2 is the right number. THanks Jan.
Two looks right to me.
Any chance that our current phone #'s can move to Provide.net?
When the Provide rep heard the number he thought it wouldn't be a problem. I'm crossing fingers the phone company agrees.
Another knowledgeable grex member suggests a dual-port PCI serial card rather than USB to serial adaptor for the two modems, as being more reliable. He thinks no more than $25 at Circuit City or Best Buy. We have a USB to Serial adaptor we could lend grex temporarily (but we want it back to use with our digital camera in case we run into a computer with no serial ports).
We could do that, too. It's a bit more expensive, not quite as extensible (though I'm not sure that matters), and requires opening the grex case. I certainly don't think the USB serial ports are any less reliable.
TROGG IS DAVID BLAINE
You have several choices: