See an unfamiliar term? Check the newsletter glossary.
newsletter://mv.com
March 1996
Note: text copies of all issues of the monthly newsletter can be found on mv
in the public archive; look in /pub/mv/inews. They're also in the online
menu!
Keene now online
Our Keene node is now up and running! You may recall that this was
originally scheduled for last September, but after NYNEX withdrew a critical
service offering, we had to find another location for this node. We've now
done so, and are providing shell, IP, and UUCP service to the Keene area.
The modem number is (603) 352-6728 - as always, check with NYNEX to see if
that is a local number for you. Contact our office for an account or for
more information.
Our rates changed on January 1
Some of you may still not be aware that our dialup rates for shell and
IP accounts changed on January 1, 1996. The change simplified our pricing
even further, reducing our offerings to two basic rate levels: a "normal"
level giving you up to 100 hours of access time, and an "extra" level which
includes up to 200 hours of access time. The old "light" and "heavy" levels
were eliminated in order to provide the best combination of service and
price at the normal level. (However, old "light" accounts will be
grandfathered through June 30, 1996, providing that they continue to only
have usage in the "light" classification).
As always, please see our web page (http://www.mv.com) for a full
details about rates and services.
Modems, busy signals, the price of new users
During the first couple of months of this year we have seen a pretty
high interest in Internet access. Translated, this means that we took in
more than the expected number of new accounts. Reacting to this higher than
normal demand is not instantaneous for us (or for NYNEX), and there have
been periods of congestion. As we've announced on our newsgroups, we've
taken several steps to address this.
One thing has been to institute idle timeouts on all of our general
dialin modem lines. We had observed many, many people staying on the modems
with no data activity at all for 30 minutes or more, and often for hours.
The new idle timeouts will make sure that if no data passes over a modem for
15 minutes, that modem will hang up and let somebody else in. We believe
that this is quite reasonable, as often this idle "camping" is uninten-
tional, and most people don't want to tie up lines when they aren't using
them.
We have also finally issued mandatory signup fees for new accounts. We
have had voluntary $20 deposits since last September, however provisioning
access for new users costs us much more than $20, and the voluntary nature
of the deposit was also a problem. Starting in late February, all new users
will be required to pay, once they are sure they want to keep the account, a
$50 non-refundable fee. This fee is due by the end of the trial 2-week
period, otherwise the account will be automatically suspended. $40 of this
fee is credited to the account against any actual usage. This will help us
to provide resources for new users without placing the cost of this on
existing users.
Netiquette
The tremendous value of the Internet is in the sum of its many parts.
Every service, user, document, file, discussion, etc., contributes to this
sum. (Some discussions have a negative value, but we won't get into
that...) Nobody really owns the Internet; when you pay your $20/mo to gain
access, you are buying the ability to participate in its structure. And as
with any society, there are right and wrong ways to participate.
Guidelines for the "right way" to participate in this Internet culture
are collectively known as "netiquette." Netiquette has many aspects depend-
ing on which part of the Internet is being addressed. Electronic mail,
Usenet news, web pages, IRC, etc., all have their basic rules of netiquette.
Some breaches of netiquette are merely faux pas, for example if you
were to join a humor discussion and immediately tell an old and well-worn
joke that continually makes the rounds, you'd have set yourself up for some
embarrasment. Others are much more serious, being thought of as sort of a
crime against Usenet for which your access might rightly be revoked. Forg-
ing someone else's email identity, targetting discussion groups for commer-
cial sales, sending wide unsolicited email announcements to unsuspecting
users - all these are examples of severe errors. Most serious are things
that are actually illegal: distribution of chain letters, harrassment of
other people through email, publishing copyrighted works, libel, etc.
You can't know everything about netiquette right away, but there are
some things you can do. First, use some common sense: anything illegal
elsewhere is illegal on the Internet too. Become familiar with the environ-
ment first; when you join a discussion group, find out what it's like, learn
the ground rules, see if there is a document that descibes that discussion
area. Remember that discussion groups are like a big conversation, they are
for you to participate in, and not collections of people for you to target
for whatever reason.
Netiquette is a thing learned by long experience, and probably no two
net veterans will agree about every aspect of it. However, you can find
some beginning documents in the following ways:
In Usenet news, there is a newsgroup news.announce.newusers which con-
tains periodic introductory documents. You should be able to find several
of them in that newsgroup at all times; if for some reason they don't happen
to be there, they will be reposted periodically.
Using FTP, you can find these same documents from various sites,
including rtfm.mit.edu, in the directory:
/pub/usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers
Note that this server has starter documents for many of the usenet news-
groups.
On the web (with a browser such as netscape or lynx), try visiting
http://www.netwelcome.com or go to one of your favorite search areas (e.g.
http://www.yahoo.com) and search for "netiquette".
MV Communications, Inc. (603) 429-2223