See an unfamiliar term? Check the newsletter glossary.
News from:
M V C o m m u n i c a t i o n s , I n c .
P.O. Box 4963
Manchester, NH 03108-4963
(603) 429-2223
July 1992
Note: text copies of all issues of the monthly newsletter can be found
on mv in the public archive; look in /news2/pub/mv/inews.
All-Worldblazer Operation
As of July 13, all of the modems on our main hunt group are Tele-
bit Worldblazers. These modems support 1200/2400 baud, V.32/V.32bis,
and Telebit's PEP and TurboPEP protocols. The stopgap V.32 line that
we had while waiting for the Worldblazers is no longer supporting
V.32, nor do you have to call the middle of the hunt group any more to
get a Worldblazer modem. Please be sure you are calling the main
number, 603-429-1735, for your calls into MV.
With the Worldblazers come some variety in connection technique.
If you are calling in PEP mode with a Telebit modem, you may find that
you have to increase the wait-for-carrier time (S7 in the Trailblazer+
and some other Telebit modems) from the default of 40 seconds to some-
thing a bit longer (say, 60). 40 seconds seems to be right on the
edge of the increased carrier negotiation time of the WB's. Also, it
appears that when called by some modems, the WB needs to see one char-
acter before it synchs up with the data properly, and sometimes the
first character (e.g., the first character of your login) is not
recognized. You can get around this by changing your script to send a
return after the first login: prompt, then to expect another login:
prompt and proceed to the login sequence. If you observe some varia-
bility in ability to connect successfully, you may want to try this.
Which leads to:
TCP/IP problems recur
We recently reported some ongoing trouble with the TCP/IP subsys-
tem on MV. (This subsystem is what handles network traffic and allows
us to talk to the Internet.) After a change in motherboards, two
increases in memory, much work on customized software for controlling
system load, the problems have not abated, but have come back in
force. Generally this problem results in service outages, whether by
stalling the network or by crashing the system. We have tried to keep
on top of it as best we can.
ISC (the vendor of our UNIX) has been looking into this, and has
just informed us that they do not think ISC UNIX works well with the
brand of Ethernet card we are using -- which happens to be the very
popular 3Comm 3C503 card. They now tell us that other ISC users have
also had this problem. We are following up on this information by
replacing the Ethernet card with a different type; if this doesn't
work, we may end up replacing the UNIX. In the meantime, we have dis-
abled remote FTP's into our system, something that appears to be a
major proximate cause of the problem.
SLIP Status
Our pursuit of SLIP access has been somewhat curtailed while we
wrestle with the above-mentioned problems. When we've found a cure,
we'll proceed full-bore on making SLIP available. Many of you have
indicated that you would like to help during the testing process, and
we'll likely take some of you up on that. Thanks!
Network Name Registry
The Internet NIC (Network Information Center) maintains various
name registries as part of its job of overseeing the network. These
include top-level domain names, network numbers, and information about
people and organizations that are available on the network. Sites on
the Internet can find out about the latter by making inquiries of the
"whois" server located at the NIC. Thanks to Lee Rothstein
(ldr@merrymeeting.mv.com), we've learned that you can interrogate this
database by electronic mail as well. Send mail to service@nic.ddn.mil
with word "help" in the body, and you'll find out how. Here, for
example, example, is the information about Lee:
Rothstein, Lee D. (LDR4) ldr@MERRYMEETING.MV.COM
New Science Associates, Inc.
7 Merrymeeting Drive
Merrimack, NH 03054-2934
(603) 424-2900
Do We Have Your Correct Info?
When you sign up with MV, we ask you to fill out and return a
questionnaire that, among other things, gives us a profile of your
site, your contact names and addresses, and your preferences. Since
over time things change, we ask that you make sure we have the correct
information for you. If you feel that something has changed, please
send us some mail (to mv-admin@mv.mv.com) and we can send you another
copy of the questionnaire (with or without the previous answers).
Just as important, you may want to review the information about MV
that we sent out to first contacts; feel free to fetch the informa-
tional files in /news2/pub/mv/info on mv. (Remember, you can get a
directory of the /news2/pub area by retrieving the file ls-lR, or
ls-lR.Z for a compressed version.)
Miscellaneous Stuff
+ We're looking for quotes to put into various press releases, not-
ably our 1-year anniversary notice. If you have any good words
about how you're helped by connectivity in general, or us in par-
ticular, we'd love to hear from you. (We'll mention you and your
company or keep it anonymous, as you prefer.) Thanks!
+ We can fetch files via FTP for you to UUCP to your systems; send
mail to mv-admin@mv.mv.com with as much detail as you know. We
can also perform searches for things you are looking for.
+ Have a special requirement? Let us know. For instance, if your
system is shutting down for a vacation, we can install special
handling of mail for your system (for instance, returning a
recorded message to the sender, forwarding the mail to another
place, or simply keeping your mail from being returned while you
are down).
+ MV maintains an archive of files related to UUCP and networking,
and of files of recent interest. This archive is in /news2/pub
on mv; a directory (updated nightly) is in the file
/news2/pub/ls-lR, with a compressed version of /news2/pub/ls-lR.Z.
+ Two new files in the archive are in /news2/pub/mv/netinfo: net-
gateways is a copy of a monthly posting by John Chew to
comp.mail.misc containing information about how to send mail from
one network to another (e.g., sending mail to someone on Com-
puserve or MCImail). finding-addrs is Jonathan Kamen's monthly
posting about how to go about finding a person's mail address.