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Grex > Coop12 > #80: Thinking about phones--our contract with Ameritech is up this year | |
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steve
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Thinking about phones--our contract with Ameritech is up this year
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Jan 31 22:25 UTC 2002 |
If I am correct, our 7 year contract with Ameritech is going to expire
around September of this year.
I think we made very much the right decision to lock ourselves into a
contract with them as it certainly saved us money by locking the basic
account rate down (other things like taxes did increase, but Ameritech
couldn't control that).
The computing world looks just a little different now than it did in 1995.
Grex needs to look around and figure out what it wants to do, phone wise.
We have more options open to us now than in 1995, such as if we want to
abandon Ameritech completely and use the cable company, or possibly some
other entity.
We also need to try to figure out just how many phones we need. We want
to keep the staff/human line, but how many people will continue with dialins
is an ineresting question. If/when we get PPP running on a terminal server
we might see some increase in phone usage, but at the same time, phone lines
are expensive no matter how you look at it, and lopping off a new more could
likely result in our getting a somewhat faster DSL connection.
At this point I have very few firm ideas about this, other than the fact
that we need to investigate a bunch of things. I think we can wind up saving
some money here if we're lucky, and hopefully transfer those funds to making
a faster/better net connection. How many people will continue to use dialins
in the future? At what point does offering diain access just not make sense
any more?
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| 49 responses total. |
eeyore
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response 1 of 49:
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Jan 31 22:58 UTC 2002 |
I *ONLY* Grex with dialup at the moment...once i have a new computer, that
might change, but I doubt it. No matter what I do, dialup seems to run
better for me. Plus, it's nice to be able to access Grex even when the net
does go down....and that happens enough.
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mary
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response 2 of 49:
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Jan 31 23:01 UTC 2002 |
I like a dialup connection better than telnet or Backtalk.
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keesan
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response 3 of 49:
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Jan 31 23:03 UTC 2002 |
I almost always dial in (99% of the time) and hope to continue.
Can't someone just run a program again (Mark?) to determine how many lines
it would take to avoid busy numbers 90 or 95% of the time? I have no
objection to an occasional busy signal (even got one today at the ISP, which
I almost never use). Dialin at 33K would be nice.
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scott
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response 4 of 49:
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Jan 31 23:05 UTC 2002 |
It'll take a few years for dialins to go away. I suppose we could have some
deal with an ISP so that we didn't need to have our own modems. But I really
want us to have some kind of super-bare-minimum option for people with
primitive computers.
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davel
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response 5 of 49:
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Jan 31 23:23 UTC 2002 |
We don't have an ISP, & dial in. When I'm at work I can get to Grex via the
net, but my family lacks that option.
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keesan
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response 6 of 49:
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Jan 31 23:50 UTC 2002 |
Today I was able to download a 49 packet file with Kermit without it crashing.
Does this mean that the new modems are installed? If so, that would eliminate
someone's reason for keeping more lines open than are actually used (they were
afraid that one of the modems was bad). I would have to have to telnet to
grex, it is so much slower than direct dial. I get tired of waiting for what
I typed to appear on the screen.
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aruba
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response 7 of 49:
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Feb 1 01:12 UTC 2002 |
STeve - We went to Centrex in October of 1996, so our 7-year contract runs
through October 2003. I believe we have to keep a minimum of 7 lines, and
we have 8 right now.
It has been a while since Jan ran his program to document modem usage, so we
should probably reassess how many lines we need.
I dial in several times every day.
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krj
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response 8 of 49:
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Feb 1 01:31 UTC 2002 |
Alas, one year too early.
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i
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response 9 of 49:
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Feb 1 03:11 UTC 2002 |
I virtually always dial in.
With very limited 'net bandwidth, dial-in (even at the current 14.4K) is
great for some things (starting with backing up what i keep on grex), and
it's certainly more responsive.
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other
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response 10 of 49:
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Feb 1 03:16 UTC 2002 |
While we're contemplating devoting resources to expanding our DSL
bandwidth, do we have any measure of how our usage relates to our current
bandwidth? In other words, would a bandwidth increase be justified?
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gelinas
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response 11 of 49:
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Feb 1 04:21 UTC 2002 |
Just a little bit ago, we 'lost' our network connection. I see this fairly
often:
10 rback0.flnt.mi.voyager.net (216.93.15.210) 19.488 ms 19.743 ms 19.714
ms 11 * * *
. . .
15 * * grex.cyberspace.org (216.93.104.34) 49.842 ms
I don't know why, so I don't if it is a bandwidth issue. Something to
consider, though.
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other
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response 12 of 49:
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Feb 1 04:29 UTC 2002 |
Power is fluctuating where I am (south of downtown) and may be elsewhere
along the packet path...?
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gelinas
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response 13 of 49:
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Feb 1 05:02 UTC 2002 |
Maybe, but:
10 rback0.flnt.mi.voyager.net (216.93.15.210) 20.779 ms 20.990 ms \
19.994 ms
11 cyberspacecomm.flnt.mi.voyager.net (216.93.107.238) 46.057 ms \
40.588 ms 39.940 ms
12 grex.cyberspace.org (216.93.104.34) 42.963 ms 41.246 ms 47.067 ms
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dpc
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response 14 of 49:
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Feb 1 20:22 UTC 2002 |
I always dial in.
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cmcgee
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response 15 of 49:
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Feb 1 22:11 UTC 2002 |
I almost always dial in. I have temporary access during the school year
through computers at work. Other wise, I have no ISP, and no way to get to
the internet except through Grex.
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jared
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response 16 of 49:
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Feb 1 23:02 UTC 2002 |
I am dialed in right now. I find it very useful to have it
as a backup for telnet/whatnot. I think that we should keep a
few lines and keeping the 761-3000 # is very important (imho)
for grex to do.
As for the traceroutes above missing the icmp ttl expired responses
does not always mean that there is loss of connectivity. I can also
do some research on behalf of grex w/ voyager to see what may be
going on.
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steve
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response 17 of 49:
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Feb 2 01:16 UTC 2002 |
Well, I can't count.
Grex moved into the Pumpkin the month I started at MSU;
I know how long I've been there, but I couldn't count straight
from 1 to 7 in monotonic order.
I don't think the issue has ever been to zap ALL the phone
lines. There are going to be some people who'll prefer them,
and lie Jared, it's definitely a good thing to keep some of
them around as a backup.
The question for me is if 3 dialins would be enough, or 7,
or ... . I just don't know that number yet.
So I'm a year early, but we ought to be thinking of our
other options for phone lines. At this point I'm not at all
sure I trust Comcast on anything at all, so perhaps we have
no other sources for dialtones other than SBC at the moment?
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gelinas
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response 18 of 49:
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Feb 2 03:21 UTC 2002 |
Maybe I should start a separate item for connection problems? I only do
traceroute when grex stops responding to my telnet sessions. Sometimes, it
recovers before telnet times out, sometimes it doesn't. Sounds like a
connectivity problem to me.
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i
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response 19 of 49:
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Feb 2 03:57 UTC 2002 |
There's KMC (?) Telecom in town that i've heard good things about.
They sell phone service built on a combo of Ameritech's equipment
& theirs, supposedly they're a bit cheaper and don't confront you
with infinite telecomputerized mazes full of clueless idiots when
you want service.
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steve
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response 20 of 49:
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Feb 2 05:35 UTC 2002 |
Yes Joe, another item for problems would be reasonable.
Can you find out more about this KMC Walter? I have heard the
name, but know nothing about them.
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jared
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response 21 of 49:
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Feb 2 14:46 UTC 2002 |
KMC Telecom. They're right on huron about a block from the Ameritech CO.
Good service, accurate billing from what i've heard from their
customers.
I'm sure i'll be back in a year to talk about phones :)
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scott
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response 22 of 49:
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Feb 2 14:48 UTC 2002 |
My former job uses KMC, and we were mostly happy with them. They're going
to be providing some kind of fractional T1 internet access to the company
pretty soon, too.
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i
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response 23 of 49:
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Feb 2 15:52 UTC 2002 |
Re: #20
I don't have real experience with them to relate that. (Could anyone else
who does put in their 2 cents here?) Given a few details about our service,
i could try talking to them about what they could offer us.
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keesan
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response 24 of 49:
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Feb 2 21:10 UTC 2002 |
Please can someone tell me if the 33K modems are in use yet, because I have
switched to dialing in to 5041 and the Kermit download works fine and I want
to know whether to bother to check out the other numbers to try to pinpoint
the bad modem(s). (And what other numbers can I dial in the process?)
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