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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
December 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.
Update on Downtime
We reported last month our decision to move our FTP service from
the mv.mv.com machine because of the kernel bugs in Interactive Sys-
tems, Inc.'s UNIX that were exacerbated by accesses to the FTP daemon.
The system has been up and running continuously since closing down the
FTP server. Correspondingly, the FTP archives are now being supported
from another system which is doing quite well.
Waiting for ISC, somewhat like waiting for Godot, proved in the
end to be fruitless -- although ISC has still not told us that they
have closed the problem issue which has been open through the entire
year. Thankfully, the problem does not affect the news, mail, and
UUCP operations of the system.
New Phone Lines
We've installed two more phone lines during the month of
December. All phone lines in the dialin group are connected to Tele-
bit Worldblazer modems, which support normal 1200/2400 baud access,
V.32/V.32bis (9600/14400 baud), Telebit's PEP (14400 baud) and Turbo-
Pep (23000 baud) protocols. All of these lines are dial-in only, as
we dedicate another separate line for dial-out.
The Year Ends
As we write this, the year of 1992 is coming to a rapid close.
This marks the end of our first full calendar year in operation. We
thank all of you who are with us, and you others who may read these
notes. As the year ends, we are processing a couple of thousand mail
messages and tens of megabytes of network news articles each day; dur-
ing the month of December (a slow month!) we passed well over 10 mil-
lion packets via our ethernet through the Internet conduit.
We find it interesting to note some of the happenings of the past
year:
MV Communications, Inc. December 1992
- 2 -
In the first quarter, we acquired access to ClariNet news, which
can bring a kind of "electronic newspaper" to you online. We
began to participate in discussions with NH state groups who were
planning a statewide networking project. We added V.32/V.32bis
capability with a T3000 modem, and upgraded to a 56Kb dedicated
Internet link after nearly saturating the old 9.6Kb line. We
also had fun hosting the March meeting of the Northern New Eng-
land UNIX Users Group at our office in Litchfield.
As the second quarter began, we attended a conference on technol-
ogy and information exchange hosted by the NH Public Utilities
Commission, and finally put aside our plans to provide an
automatic FTP server since perfectly good FTP-by-mail servers are
available on the Internet (and after all, if you can reach the
Internet, you can reach one mail server just as well as another).
In this quarter, we allowed access to our FTP archives from UUCP
as well; this means, among other things, that the monthly list-
ings from Doctor Dobbs Journal are available by UUCP. We reached
an agreement with NEARnet allowing us to provide SLIP services,
but failed in attempts to get this beyond the testing phase.
These failures were due to ISC bugs, and as the year closes,
we're gearing up to try again with a change in operating plat-
forms.
In the third quarter we began making GIFs of weather satellite
photos available online in our UUCP archives. We reached an
agreement with ClariNet Communications, Inc., that offers full
ClariNet feeds to home systems for a significantly discounted
price ($15/month!). And we converted entirely to Worldblazer
modems, allowing us to offer a broad range of modem protocols on
all dial-in lines.
The last quarter of the year found us agreeing to participate in
the NHNet networking pilot program. We made a small change in
handling of the MV.COM domain addresses that let you have sub-
domain addresses if you are a member of this domain. During this
quarter, we finally decided to stop waiting for ISC to fix some
of the kernel bugs that have plagued us, and have begun to turn
in other directions.
The Year Begins
As 1993 begins, we look forward to a number of things. Among
them:
The NHNet networking pilot will last the entire first quarter of
1993, bringing scores of networking neophytes into immediate con-
tact with computer-based communication. These people will be,
for the most part, representatives of businesses and NH govern-
ment and educational institutions, and we hope they get a good
feel for what networking can do for people. We intend to
MV Communications, Inc. December 1992
- 3 -
establish one or more nhnet.all newsgroups and encourage these
people to communicate via the news; we believe that this could
serve as an interesting bridge between the members of the pilot
and the NH networking community at large. In other words, you're
welcome to join in to the nhnet newsgroups!
We will reopen the issue of SLIP connections.
We also look toward offering other kinds of access such as
interactive shell accounts.
And finally, our New Years resolution is to be more prompt get-
ting these monthly mailings out.
We wish you the best in the coming new year.
MV Communications, Inc. December 1992