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Grex > Coop11 > #238: Dropping from 9 dial-in lines down to 7 | |
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| Author |
Message |
aruba
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Dropping from 9 dial-in lines down to 7
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Mar 1 03:30 UTC 2001 |
At the board meeting tonight, Jan showed us statistics that said that
although we have 9 public dial-in lines, not once in the last 3 months have
more than 7 of them been in use at the same time. With that evidence in
hand, the board voted to drop two dialin lines, pending a one-week
discussion of the topic here in coop. So this item is for discussion of
dropping those lines.
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| 100 responses total. |
keesan
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response 1 of 100:
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Mar 1 04:43 UTC 2001 |
I am in favor. I have not had any busy numbers during that period, though
I did a few times before that. Should save about $500/year? In two or three
years that should compensate for the credit card business.
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janc
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response 2 of 100:
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Mar 1 04:57 UTC 2001 |
Here are the statistics I brought to the board meeting. Sorry for not posting
them in time for advance discussion - I forgot all about the subject until
Mark called me just before the meeting.
Dialup Usage between Fri Dec 1 00:00:00 2000 and Sun Dec 31 23:59:59 2000
0: 315.86 42.76%
1: 253.74 34.35%
2: 112.94 15.29%
3: 40.48 5.48%
4: 12.53 1.70%
5: 2.74 0.37%
6: 0.36 0.05%
7: 0.00 0.00%
8: 0.00 0.00%
9: 0.00 0.00%
Dialup Usage between Mon Jan 1 00:00:00 2001 and Wed Jan 31 23:59:59 2001
0: 274.93 39.40%
1: 288.91 51.24%
2: 123.33 17.95%
3: 43.77 5.99%
4: 10.92 1.47%
5: 1.25 0.17%
6: 0.17 0.02%
7: 0.00 0.00%
8: 0.00 0.00%
9: 0.00 0.00%
Dialup Usage between Thu Feb 1 00:00:00 2001 and Thu Mar 1 23:59:59 2001
0: 244.83 36.78%
1: 233.58 35.09%
2: 126.64 19.02%
3: 44.83 6.73%
4: 12.83 1.93%
5: 2.73 0.41%
6: 0.23 0.03%
7: 0.04 0.01%
8: 0.00 0.00%
9: 0.00 0.00%
You'll note that we have never used above 7 lines in the last three months.
Over those three months, seven lines were in use for only about 2.5 minutes.
There were never eight or nine lines in use.
So it seems unlikely that a cut back to seven lines instead of nine is likely
to be noticed by anyone.
There does seem to be a continuous steady trend of decreasing dial-in use.
The terms of our Centrex contract with Ameritech would make it somewhat
difficult to cut to fewer than 5 dial-in lines. I doubt if we would be
eager to cut below that level anyway any time soon.
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carson
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response 3 of 100:
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Mar 1 05:53 UTC 2001 |
(why not go all the way to five?)
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eeyore
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response 4 of 100:
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Mar 1 06:03 UTC 2001 |
Not now....It's kinda nice to have the backup lines just in case....
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carson
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response 5 of 100:
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Mar 1 12:01 UTC 2001 |
(but back-up for what? in case one of the lines is bad? in case
our dial-in use suddenly grows because of an influx of U-M students?
EMU students? grade schoolers? in case we have to help out Ken
during a disaster? maybe a rainy day?)
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aruba
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response 6 of 100:
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Mar 1 15:12 UTC 2001 |
I think the answer, Carson, is that the board is cautious about cutting too
many lines because this has been such a contentios issue in the past. We
will certainly revisit the question again in 3 months or so.
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krj
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response 7 of 100:
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Mar 1 19:46 UTC 2001 |
In light of the disappearance or increasing restrictions on the free ISP
services like NetZero and Bluelight.com, does Grex want to revisit
the issue of offering PPP access to Grex through the dialins?
(NetZero has cut users back to 25 hours per month. Bluelight cut back
to 25 hours a month or two ago and is cutting again to 12 hours.)
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drew
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response 8 of 100:
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Mar 1 19:57 UTC 2001 |
Netzero's web page says 40 hours. You sure of the numbers?
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krj
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response 9 of 100:
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Mar 1 21:39 UTC 2001 |
I'm sure of Bluelight, not sure about Netzero.
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i
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response 10 of 100:
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Mar 2 01:25 UTC 2001 |
I've seen enough flakey modem behavior to want there to be an extra
line or two available 'most all the time. (Unless sneaking in at work,
dial-up is my only was to telnet in to Grex.) I support the 9-to-7
drop...hopefully the we'll make sure that the most dubious modems, ports,
wires, etc. are the ones idled by this cutback...
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steve
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response 11 of 100:
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Mar 2 01:43 UTC 2001 |
We should cut the two lines which we simply hasn't been using.
Given that each line costs $20/month, cutting one off is free and
re-establishing a line is $42, after two months of inactivity it
pays us to kill the line even if we later decide to reactivate one.
I like keeping the line thats been barely used, just so we can
keep at what must be just about 0.0% busy signals. We're saving
$40/mo right now, and we can visit this issue again in a bit.
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keesan
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response 12 of 100:
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Mar 2 01:57 UTC 2001 |
Three lines are barely used (less than 1% of the time) and two are never used.
Do we need THREE backup lines or would one be enough? (I am one of the people
who always dials in and I would not mind a busy signal once a month).
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eeyore
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response 13 of 100:
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Mar 2 06:17 UTC 2001 |
It's not the busy signal that worries me. It's the number of times that I
have to switch phone numbers to actually connect properly to the system. I
have to play musical numbers quite often, and it's nice to know that there
will probably always be a couple of extra ones open, so that we have a
non-flakey line to dial in to.
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keesan
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response 14 of 100:
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Mar 2 19:18 UTC 2001 |
I thought it was the modems, not the lines, that are the problem. Could
someone find a way to test out the modems rather than paying $60/month for
barely used phone lines? Or cut down to 5 phone lines and use the $80/month
saved to upgrade to 28.8K modems for them? Maybe even new and known non-flaky
modems? It seems sort of silly to use phone lines as insurance on old modems.
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eeyore
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response 15 of 100:
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Mar 2 20:02 UTC 2001 |
I'm sure that will come along eventually....but for now, this seems to me like
a good way of keeping the peace.
And we aren't paying that much more for the extra lines.
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keesan
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response 16 of 100:
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Mar 2 22:22 UTC 2001 |
Only about $60 a month for three barely used lines, or 12 memberships, or
$700/year. Not much. Phones seem to be grex's biggest expense, even more
than credit card fiascos.
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gull
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response 17 of 100:
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Mar 3 03:45 UTC 2001 |
Seeing as it costs money to add dropped lines back in, it makes sense to
cut them in stages instead of all at once. Cutting out two of them
seems like a good step.
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keesan
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response 18 of 100:
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Mar 3 03:58 UTC 2001 |
If you drop two lines and then addone back after month, you are even.
What are the chances that grex would need to add back one or more of three
barely used lines? How many actual minutes a monght have tehy been used?
(excuse telnet lag). Is there any historical trend of sudden increases in
dial-in access? I thought it has been a steady decline. Changing to faster
modems would decrease the online time of people like me who use grex to fetch
files from the net or upoad files to send in email, and thus also reduce the
number of modems needed. I do not see how we can possibly lose.
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eeyore
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response 19 of 100:
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Mar 3 06:17 UTC 2001 |
The reality is that the modems are not coming any time soon, to my knowledge.
If, in a couple of months, we find that we still aren't using those lines,
then fine, no problem, we'll probably discuss dropping them. But as it stands
right now, we really are better off keeping them up and running. We are
keeping (to my way of thinking) two extra lines. That's two, not ten. I
don't think that it will break us any time soon.
Can we bury the dead horse now?
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aruba
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response 20 of 100:
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Mar 3 13:53 UTC 2001 |
Sindi - I think your suggestions are good ones. I just think the prudent
thing to do is to drop lines slowly. You're probably right that dropping a
third line now wouldn't make much of a difference either way, and we will
certainly take up dropping more lines in 3 months or so.
As far as upgrading the modems, I'd like to hear what the staff think about
that.
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keesan
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response 21 of 100:
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Mar 4 03:09 UTC 2001 |
Would it make sense to vote on some general policy, such as, if a phone line
has not been used for more than 1% of the time, for 3 months, it gets dropped,
rather than discuss the issue repeatedly? Then you could apply the policy
across the board. Another way to approach this would be to decide, for
instance, that we keep enough lines to cover 99% of the time. (Would some
mathematician tell me if these are the same thing?).
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aruba
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response 22 of 100:
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Mar 4 03:21 UTC 2001 |
I entered an item a while back, trying to come up with a general policy on
how we should decide how many lines we should have. As I recall, we never
reached a consensus, and there was a good deal of rancor. Maybe other
people recall it differently.
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gull
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response 23 of 100:
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Mar 4 05:26 UTC 2001 |
Re #21: It seems to me that even if we only drop them two at a time, we
can only have this discussion, at most, five more times, anyway. ;>
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russ
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response 24 of 100:
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Mar 4 05:54 UTC 2001 |
I'm sure that at least part of the "unused lines" phenomenon is
due to one or more bad modems and doesn't reflect real usage desires.
Occasionally I call in and the line rings four times before the
modem picks up, instead of the usual one. I'm always happy when
this happens, because the modem I get is blindingly fast compared
to the ones at the top of the trunk hunt. However, it reveals that
there is a dead modem somewhere in the sequence. This modem will
look like an unused line no matter how many people are trying to
call. If there are two dead and one flaky, it looks like almost
no usage on the last three.
We shouldn't be making decisions based on flawed data.
We have a problem with testing this because there is no way to tell
which modem someone is using when they come in from the terminal
server. I think that Grex should connect one modem at a time directly
to the machine, so that usage can be measured. This would let us find
the bad modem and put one of the spares on that port, which would lead
to better statistics.
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