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|
| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 115 responses total. |
mary
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response 19 of 115:
| 
Apr 16 15:11 UTC 2010 |
I agree.
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jadecat
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response 20 of 115:
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Apr 16 15:39 UTC 2010 |
resp:14 Yeah, that was my thought too. ;)
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zulu
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response 21 of 115:
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Apr 16 16:39 UTC 2010 |
Keep the phone lines. Dump Grex.
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keesan
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response 22 of 115:
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Apr 16 16:55 UTC 2010 |
Keep grex, dump twits.
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richard
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response 23 of 115:
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Apr 16 18:26 UTC 2010 |
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.
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bellstar
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|
response 24 of 115:
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Apr 16 18:34 UTC 2010 |
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.
|
kentn
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|
response 25 of 115:
|
Apr 16 18:56 UTC 2010 |
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.
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jgelinas
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response 26 of 115:
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Apr 18 16:53 UTC 2010 |
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.
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wlevak
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response 27 of 115:
|
Apr 19 01:28 UTC 2010 |
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.
|
tonster
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|
response 28 of 115:
|
Apr 19 02:34 UTC 2010 |
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.
|
keesan
|
|
response 29 of 115:
|
Apr 19 15:27 UTC 2010 |
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.
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richard
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|
response 30 of 115:
|
Apr 19 18:50 UTC 2010 |
would more people dial in if grex decided to keep the dialins and
decided to buy the faster modems?
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keesan
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response 31 of 115:
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Apr 19 19:15 UTC 2010 |
The faster modems are free, we already have them but nobody bothered to take
Bill there to install them.
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kentn
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response 32 of 115:
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Apr 19 20:56 UTC 2010 |
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.
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tod
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response 33 of 115:
|
Apr 19 21:01 UTC 2010 |
Reminds me of the guy in Hangover asking if his pager will work in the casino
|
unicorn
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response 34 of 115:
|
Apr 20 00:00 UTC 2010 |
Re: #27
What is this "new system where dial up file transfer is slower and more
difficult"? What was the old system?
|
cross
|
|
response 35 of 115:
|
Apr 20 06:16 UTC 2010 |
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.
|
lar
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response 36 of 115:
|
Apr 20 07:59 UTC 2010 |
it might be wise to keep one line
|
cross
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response 37 of 115:
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Apr 20 09:11 UTC 2010 |
For what, I wonder?
|
other
|
|
response 38 of 115:
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Apr 20 17:26 UTC 2010 |
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.
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katie
|
|
response 39 of 115:
|
Apr 20 17:37 UTC 2010 |
(where's the 'like' button?) ;-)
|
mary
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response 40 of 115:
|
Apr 20 18:30 UTC 2010 |
I strongly agree with Eric's #38.
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slynne
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response 41 of 115:
|
Apr 20 20:49 UTC 2010 |
I also agree with resp:38.
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lar
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response 42 of 115:
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Apr 20 21:14 UTC 2010 |
grex will be dead in a year anyway. Might as well spend some of cash
it's got
|
tonster
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response 43 of 115:
|
Apr 20 22:05 UTC 2010 |
resp:29: Like I said, you're doing it wrong. I've used dial-up to ssh
and telnet for work on and off for over 10 years. It's pretty much the
same dialing in directly as it is sshing in. I suppose perhaps it's not
if you're using a cheap/free service to do it since they're going to be
overloaded, and, well, you get what you pay for, but otherwise it works
just as well.
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