response 25 of 142:

Jan 19 07:08 UTC 1995

...although if you find enough voters, you can change it.

response 27 of 142:

Jan 19 07:24 UTC 1995

My basic point in starting this item is that we are going to have a real
access crisis when people can't get in via u o m and we have only 6 or 8
phone lines.  The point is, our expenses are going to go up to provide more
phone lines.  And it looks like a capacity to add phone lines is severely 
limited.  The time may come, and soon, when we are going to have to limit
internet e-mail to members, just to cut down on the number of user users.

response 29 of 142:

Jan 19 08:06 UTC 1995

   No, our capacity to add more lines isn't that restricted.  We can
add 9 more right now with the current hardware we have.  At 2400bps,
we could add them and the people who'd lose access via Merit would be
useing them instead.  Thats why I don't think we'd be too badly hurt
by the extra 9 lines.  So we can add more lines--all it takes is a
god of money.

   If we got a terminal server, then its ports would be able to handle
14.4Kbps connections (and maybe even 28.8Kbps if we wanted to).  We
could also keep the 2400bps lines as they are now, and have the abiliity
to have 32 lines.  Of course, we'd have to go to a SPARC at that point.

   But why would be want to limit e-mail, ever?  If we were to have to
make choices about limits, I'd say limit the number of incomming telnet
sessions into Grex.  That, or, find a way of shoving email traffic
onto a different circuit from the Internet link.  It would be work,
but we could do it.

   The last thing I want to see is people on Grex start thinking of
restrictions based on who is a member and who isn't.

response 31 of 142:

Jan 19 08:45 UTC 1995

I very much doubt that will be so.  Most purely local users already
actually use the dial-in ports, or have other internet access.  The
majority of our internet users are non-local.  In fact, a majority of
internet users may well be out of state, and a substantial fraction (20%
when I looked) are from out of the country.  You needn't take my word
for it.  "!last" will tell you *loads*.

Furthermore, internet users represent a relatively cheap, and so far
untapped source of funds.  Since they don't use our relatively expensive
phone lines, they are cheaper for us to support.  Very few internet
users on this system actually have any idea how grex is supported - one
group of users I talked to thought their college was paying for grex!
While many internet users are, in fact, students with little disposable
income, some are fairly affluent.  The feedback we've received from
internet users has been generally quite positive - it's quite probable
that even a modest membership drive would net us many additional
internet members.  My guess is that we could quite likely double our
membership if we wanted to.

In fact, up until now, we've actually done very little to seek out new
members - and, if anything, we've been doing gradually better at keeping
our head above financial ruin (as witnessed by our bank account).  The
reasons for this are pretty much historical: when this system was
founded, it was bankrolled for a year by the founders ("the original
members") with the specific intent of avoiding fundraising campaigns as
much as possible.  The founders did this because they felt it was
important to make as sharp a contrast with panic-mode desparation
fund-raising as possible.  Ever since then, in keeping with this
original scheme, fund-raising campaigns have been extremely modest.
Given we're in as good a financial shape today as ever, I see no reason
to panic.

Financially, there is no better strategy than "continous growth" for
grex.  There are scales of economy in almost everything Grex uses; even
modems get cheaper when bought in bulk.  A cpu that is twice as fast
does not cost twice as much, and generally uses less electricity.  This
is also true of disk.  All of these resources are also getting steadily
cheaper as time goes on.  The same buying strategy that allowed us to
start on a Sun-2 ("is it free") allowed us to upgrade to a Sun-3 next
year, with little extra expense.  Indeed, to some extent, we've been
able to fund expansion purely in terms of power savings.  Even though
doubling the system is less than a factor of 2 in cost, doubling
membership is still strictly linear with respect to user population.
That makes growth extremely attractive; because the larger the system,
the more intrinsically interesting it is, the more resources that can be
funded, and the cheaper it can be on a per-user basis.

So, I absolutely reject the gloom and doom thesis.  I believe it has no
foundation whatsoever in fact.  I believe the real issue is not worrying
about any artificial scarcity, but rather in terms of worrying about how
to communicate and preserve our values as we manage this growth.  I also
believe that if we ever decide to *stop* growing, we will in that
instant have lost all the values that originally went into making this
system.

response 33 of 142:

Jan 19 08:51 UTC 1995

   The idea of Merit going away for people (at least free access going
away) got me to look at the logins for a day here on Grex, to see what
type of logins we've gotten in one day.  So, I looked at Janurary 18th.

   This is hardly scientific, but it does show some things.  Note that
all logins used are actual logins and not a collection of a person who
logs in more than once, ie, 'steve' logging in five times is counted
five times, rather then once.  This does effect numbers somewhat.  Having
said that--

   2142 total logins of all sorts on Grex Janurary 18th;
   1929 total that came in on the Internet link;
    213 total that came in on the dialins.

    Of the 1929 sessions that came in over the dialins:
     85 came in on mlink.hh.lib.mi.us;
     82 came in on burrow.cl.msu.edu;
     48 came in on various Merit portmasters;
     23 came in on various *.itd.umich.edu machines;
     11 came in on various *.engin.umich.edu machines;
     15 came in on various other UM machines.
   
    264 "local" logins total.  Note that my definition of "local"
         means a session comming in from a place that might be
         considered a local phone call.  Obviously not all are.

   So:
    - 90% of the access to Grex comes in over the Internet link.
    - 10% comes in over our dialin lines.
    - 13.6% of Internet sessions are "local".
    - 86.4% of Internet sessions are not "local".

response 35 of 142:

Jan 19 11:40 UTC 1995

Now THAT'S what I'm worried about, in all of this brouhaha.
Which is why I'd like to know if it's M-Link or just
Merit whos' doing this.  And why are they waiting so long
to announce it?  If they really want to make some money
from this, they should announce it AHEAD OF TIME to make
sure people pay them before they make the switch, yes???

I telnetted over to M-Link yesterday and saw no announcements
about this posted.

chi1taxi, if you want posting access to Usenet from Grex, you
don't even need to be a member to do that.  Send mail
to group.name.usenet@decwrl.dec.com, for instance to post to
my favorite newsgroup I mail to

        rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon-5.usenet@decwrl.dec.com

And that's it.  They post it for you, wiht your own address
attached.  I got responses to my test message within a
few hours.  (Ironically, you don't even need to be a member
to post to Usenet from Grex, though you do have to be a member
to read it!)

And I personally would never, ever, ever want to start charging
Grex users for e-mail.  (Unless the stupid Post Office
intervenes, of course.)

response 37 of 142:

Jan 19 14:07 UTC 1995

Point being Grex will lose users.

response 39 of 142:

Jan 19 18:32 UTC 1995

  Gerald, reread #33.  If everyone who used "local" Internet access went
away, Grex would only lose 10% of its people.  This does not mean I'm
happy about it!  Just that it wouldn't be a large number of people.
Forunately, if/when Merit access goes away, other Internet providers
are starting to come along which can pick up the slack.  Not for free
unforunately, but they will be there.
   There are other ideas that Grex should investigate, like wide-area
phone numbers such that Grex is a local call from the 313/517 area,
and "foriegn exchanges" like Plytmouth that are local to something like
2.2 million people.  It's all doable, if we're pushed that way.

response 41 of 142:

Jan 19 20:57 UTC 1995

)1) and (2) are largely different constituencies, making the decision
more difficult. In fact, the decision will, in part, determine the
constituencies.

response 43 of 142:

Jan 20 00:51 UTC 1995

Well, here's some actual news to throw into the fray:
(gleaned from Usenet newsgroup mi.misc)


From gary@ah3.cal.msu.edu Thu Jan 19 19:46:26 EST 1995
Newsgroups: mi.misc,msu.misc
Subject: MichNet Access Changes

A friend forwarded this to me, thought it might interest some people.
Gary
================= Begin forwarded message =================

From: ah231@detroit.freenet.org (Bernard F. Gaffney)
Subject: MichNet Access Changes
Date: Wed, 18 Jan

I thought I'd update you on the MichNet dialup access changes. As of May
1995 ALL dialup access will require an authorization account from a
MichNet member or affiliate.  Those members currently running an
NAS(Network Access Server) are free to do so now.  (And ALL access is to
be by NAS as of Oct 14, '95).  About 10% or so(rough guess) MichNet sites
are now running NASes.  And some NAS sites have already implemented
authorization accounting. I had a call from an individual at
MALPH(Michigan Association for Local Public Health) about their BBS which
can be accessed thru our(MI Dept of Public Health) I'net link.  MALPH is
having local users dial MichNet sites to access the I'net, and one user
dialed the Battle Creek number(616-963-9975).  Turned out BC has a NAS in
place, and and authorization account was required, and the user wanted to
know what was going on. So to make a long story short -- the free ride is
close to being over. The authorization accounts will cost anywhere from
free to $90/month, depending on where/how you get one(MichNet
members/affiliates can charge or give them out free or at reduced
rates).  (That's NINETY dollars per MONTH!!!).


 Thought you'd like to know.
--
Bernard F. Gaffney, Jr.
ah231@detroit.freenet.org

response 45 of 142:

Jan 20 02:36 UTC 1995

What exactly is a Michnet "affiliate"?

response 47 of 142:

Jan 20 03:46 UTC 1995

Steve... way back somewhere you 
said 10% wasn't significant.  I think it's significant to the 10%.
I didn't enter the response to urge Grex to do some
thing about it, I
entered the response so that people would be aware of something that might
effect them.

response 49 of 142:

Jan 20 04:13 UTC 1995

   I don't mean to downplay the significance of those 10%--certainly
to them, its a disaster!  Hopefully, people didn't see it as my saying
they aren't important.  They are.  But in terms of the total number of
people comming into Grex, its small.
   This touches upon the question of what Grex should be, and to whom.
If we're trying to be most things to people more local than international,
then we've got a bigger problem.
   My personal feeling is that we should try ang grow so that locals
who don't have other access to things ca, through us and M-Net and
other places like us.