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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 171 responses total. |
srw
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response 25 of 171:
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Dec 23 06:28 UTC 1994 |
We should consider another possible sink for the money we are operating on.
While I agree that the hardware that has been outlined above is all very
desirable, I would like to see the bandwidth improved on the internet link.
Yes, I know that the 486 FreeBSD router plan will improve things, but
I believe we need to plan to spend money for more bandwidth.
Ideally, we can negotiate a favorable rate somewhere, but this has not
been attempted, and now matter how well we negotiate, we will need to
allocate some funds for such a project.
I believe the inadequacy of our link is a prime cause for people to
fail to stay with Grex. I see the prospect of ISDN as worthwhile and
almost affordable today. In the long run, I expect it to cost far
less (if anything) because of the new members that could be derived.
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steve
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response 26 of 171:
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Dec 23 09:40 UTC 1994 |
Quite right, Steve. The next generation of the PC route box
might increase things by a factor of two, but that will be completely
eaten by growth, if not news once it flows here again.
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cel
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response 27 of 171:
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Dec 23 16:15 UTC 1994 |
Re: STeve's #24:
yes, there *were* record head problems with the drives. my experience
with flexible media (multi-track audio and digital tape) has always
warned me that the drop-out rate for floppies and narrow format tapes
is much higher than other magnetic media. add to that data compression
and you stand to lose quite a bit of data if a tape should fail in any
way. but that's my personal paranoia, fwiw.
with regard to your internet link, is there any way to tell how often
modem error correction is being invoked? you may be losing bandwidth
there and not know it. here's another vote for ISDN. what are the
costs for ISDN these days?
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popcorn
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response 28 of 171:
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Dec 23 16:29 UTC 1994 |
I second what srw said in #25: link bandwidth is a prime concern.
Re 27: I think Ivars sells ISDN connections for $250 a month, but I'm
not sure if that would be the price for a round the clock connection or
if it's the price for occasional dial ins, and round the clock service
would cost more. In addition, the phone company charges something
like $40 a month for ISDN. Startup costs are something like $250 to Ivars,
plus $1400 for an ISDN modemlike thingey. I'm not sure if we'd need to
buy two of the modemlike thingeys, one for each end of the connection.
This is almost in our reach now. I think it's likely to pay for itself
with new memberships it brings in.
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tsty
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response 29 of 171:
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Dec 23 17:07 UTC 1994 |
Here are the numbers that go with those labels on the Exabyte:
DR 1363 725150-A00
MX 546266 724022-A17
MXPROM 251K 013086-025
DF 546912 726001-A07
CD 33890 723002-A08
RW 546866 722002-A09
SV 546322 721103-B24
SVPROM C020A 013087-007
DECK 8145232 728000-C03
Enjoy.
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steve
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response 30 of 171:
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Dec 23 17:49 UTC 1994 |
Thanks TS--I can do more with those after Christmas.
Overall our link modei perform fairly well. We don't connect at
28.8Kbpos very often. There was a time that I tried connecting to
INCnet manually and examined the Hayes for the connect speed. We
usually got 21Kbps. What happend mostly with us is that we get blown
off the line when a burst of noise comes across, such that we have
to reestablish things. Over the spring and summer things were great;
towards fall things were much worse, sometimes rebooting 3 times in one
day. Now things are stable again, and I think we've been up in excess
of 8 days straight.
ISDN *would* be wonderful. The killer cost for us isn't the hardware
but the monthly costs associated with that much bandwidth. Sigh.
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scg
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response 31 of 171:
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Dec 23 17:52 UTC 1994 |
Something that was circulated at work a few months ago said ISDN lines
from the phone company, after the $800 startup cost was eliminated, cost
$28.50 per month.
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andyv
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response 32 of 171:
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Dec 23 19:20 UTC 1994 |
Can we get a firm estimate on that?
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steve
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response 33 of 171:
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Dec 23 20:50 UTC 1994 |
The *cost* of the ISDN line is seperate from the cost of carrying the
Internet traffic over it. Think of it as layers--the ISDN costs are the
physial side of things; the cost for Internet connectivity is the next
higher layer sitting atop the physical. So, while ISDN costs are indeed
in the $30 range or so, its the net connectivity that will really cost
us.
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andyv
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response 34 of 171:
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Dec 24 05:25 UTC 1994 |
SUMMARY (as of reply #31):
Well, I would like to summarize the discussion we have been
having here and see where we have gotten, especially for those
who have struggled to get this far through the hardware pros and
cons. The following people have responded:
STeve Andre' (steve) Marcus D. Watts (mdw)
TS Taylor (tsty) Valerie Mates (popcorn)
AJ LoCicero (cicero) Chuck Lever (cel)
Dan Romanchik (danr) Rane Curl (rcurl)
Steve Weiss (srw) Steve Gibbard (scg)
HARDWARE:
The sentiments have seemed to favor sticking with upgrading the
Sun system we already have because of reliability and
compatability. This would take about $5000. The parts listed
in the beginning could be purchased piecemeal as funds become
available.
MONTHLY INCOME/EXPENSES:
In the Dungeon monthly expenses will be about $300/month.
Receipts are running about $450/month.
Extra Bandwidth is needed, an undertermined monthly expense.
We have about 90 members currently representing $6480 per year
in dues. Purchases have been financed by fund raisers.
CONCLUSION:
I think we need to have those hardware items placed on a list
with priorities on them and projected dates of purchase (stick
our necks out a little).
A projected monthly income and expense estimate for the next 6
months based on past records (no rose colored glasses ;-) is
needed.
I would like to enter another discussion about how to make some
progress with another summary of this discussion at the
Note: I wrote this offline and I'm not going to retype it now so please
have mercy on the newbie ;-)
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andyv
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response 35 of 171:
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Dec 24 05:28 UTC 1994 |
I just took a look at the above and noticed all the >>>>>>>> that were
insertedare gone now so you probably are windering what the "Note" meant.
Newbies!?
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popcorn
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response 36 of 171:
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Dec 24 13:42 UTC 1994 |
(You can do :p at the beginning of a line, and press enter, to see what
a response you're entering looks like. Yours appears to have been cut
off part way through.)
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srw
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response 37 of 171:
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Dec 24 22:56 UTC 1994 |
THose > are just prompts that came out late because you fed it your input
so quickly. They never were in the text, they just appeared mixed in
when you were feeding it in.
Thanks for summarizing. Please continue. This is an important area to make
progress in. This is the kind of planning i have been pushing for.
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kentn
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response 38 of 171:
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Dec 24 23:36 UTC 1994 |
Me, too (pushing/throwing darts).
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andyv
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response 39 of 171:
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Dec 25 00:43 UTC 1994 |
With that, lets discuss the $$$ and the time table here and I am going to
start another discussion on how to communicate our goals and situation
to the users more efficiently.
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danr
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response 40 of 171:
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Dec 25 20:09 UTC 1994 |
Regarding income and expenses, what exactly are you looking for? My
projection is that we will continue to take in $450/month. We can't
base our expenses on our current expenses because a) we'll have more
phone lines when we move to the dungeon, and b) we're going to have to
measure our power usage and re-establish our power consumption. We've
made so many changes since we last did this, I'd bet we're off by a
considerable percentage. My best guess is that the expenses will be
around $300/month.
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andyv
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response 41 of 171:
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Dec 25 23:35 UTC 1994 |
Can you make a projection based on what has been discussed here concerning
purchases which would makes Grex more effective? If the number is negative
it just means we need to raise some more money.
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steve
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response 42 of 171:
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Dec 26 01:55 UTC 1994 |
I don't think we can, Andy. Since we aren't a business, the word
effective doesn't quite work the same way, if thats the angle you're
thinking of. Getting the 8mm tape drive will help out a lot in
terms of efficiency, becusae we'll be able to do real backups, easily
and often.
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andyv
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response 43 of 171:
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Dec 26 02:19 UTC 1994 |
I thought the 8mm tape drive was already approved and in the works. Instead
of effective, I could have said faster ;-) when the system is loaded up.
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steve
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response 44 of 171:
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Dec 26 02:22 UTC 1994 |
Ah, OK. ...You;re right--the tape drive has been approved, and I
have two possible sources for one at the moment.
The single thing that will make Grex "faster" is the new PC Route box
(actually a small UNIX box), but thats already approved too.
The next "big" thing would be to get a SPARC card for the system.
It will mean brining up another Sun-3 (to turn into a Sun-4) which
will take effort, but thats probably the fastest/easiest thing to do,
short of spending multi-Kilobucks for a 486 box.
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kentn
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response 45 of 171:
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Dec 26 02:31 UTC 1994 |
Cyberspace, Inc. is a business...
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rcurl
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response 46 of 171:
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Dec 26 04:09 UTC 1994 |
Did you mean Cyberspace Communications Inc (us), or is someone trying to
steal our name?
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kentn
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response 47 of 171:
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Dec 26 05:30 UTC 1994 |
Yeah, right.
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steve
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response 48 of 171:
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Dec 26 05:36 UTC 1994 |
Can you make your comment a little easier for us Christmas-impaired,
Kent? ;-)
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srw
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response 49 of 171:
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Dec 26 08:52 UTC 1994 |
The way I read it, STeve, you said we aren't a business, and Kentn said we
are. We are a corporation, for certain I'll agree with that. I stop short
of calling us a business, though. We're non-profit, charitable, etc.
We still have to behave in a businesslike manner in many ways, though.
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