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newsletter://mv.com
November 1998
Minor rate changes
As of September 1, 1998, we've made a couple of small changes to our
rate schedule. The first change gives you more hours with the $20/month
shell and IP dialup accounts. Previously these accounts included up to 100
hours per month; we've upped it to 150 hours.
The second change is a reduction in the price of hosting a domain
name. Prior to this change, each domain name that you registered and that
was hosted on our nameservers was priced at $20/month, offset by other
access charges. With this change the first domain name is still priced at
$20/month, but additional domain names on your account are charged at
$5/month. As before, any charges for domain names establish a minimum pay-
ment level, and are offset by other access charges on your account. For
example, if you have an IP account for which you are paying $20/month, a
single domain name at $20/month would be covered by that payment.
New bandwidth
We have ordered new bandwidth to the Internet backbone, which should
be turned up around the last week in November. This new bandwidth is being
provided by GTEi/BBNPlanet; this should help improve our connectivity to
the Internet at large and, because of BBNPlanet's presence in our region,
to many sites in this area as well.
Over the next few months we will also be making changes in MV's local
network topology designed to improve performance across our network.
Specifically we will be taking most of the remaining high-speed circuits
out of Litchfield and moving them to connect into Manchester; and we will
be improving the links between our Manchester and Nashua offices (and thus
speeding the data flow between the physical locations where we connect to
the Internet backbone).
Announcements, user information, and the like
Did you know that we have a section of our web page with information
to help you use your MV Internet service? Go to www.mv.com, and click on
Tools and Information for MV Users (directly below our logo). Some impor-
tant things that you will find include:
* News and updates of things happening. From time to time we post
information about changes upcoming at MV, new services, changes in
access numbers, more facilities, etc.
* Outages and scheduled maintenance. Here's a page that you should
check periodically to find notices of upcoming maintenance that might
affect you, or reports of outages within our facility (do you ever
suspect that something has happened with your service and don't know
how to find out? We try to to be very forthright in reporting prob-
lems here and in our usenet newsgroups).
* Web pages. Every shell or IP account holder can have a web page
hosted at MV as part of your account; this is how to do it, and a
description of some tools available for your web page.
* Web page and user directory. If you have a web page hosted at MV, you
can enter it in our web page and user directory. The directory is
organized by name and by area of interest; it's how people who are
browsing pages at MV can find yours.
* Account maintenance. Change your passwords, check your current usage
report, maintain your POP mailbox through the web in this area.
Well, we don't have to tell you everything that's there: if you didn't know
about this section (or even if you did), come and check it out now and then.
BNH/Brooks numbers and physical POPs
Through our Brooks numbers (aka the "bnh" group) we offer dialup
access throughout most of the state of New Hampshire. (For more informa-
tion about these numbers and about the physical POPs, go to our web page at
www.mv.com and click on the Access Numbers selection.) Since installing
the Brooks access last May, we have also maintained our physical points of
presence in various locations in southern NH, albeit while downsizing those
POPs as more and more users convert to using the Brooks numbers. As of
mid-October, we decommissioned the physical POP in Keene as the last users
moved away from using it.
Over the coming few months we will be more aggressive in downsizing
the physical POPs, and we'd like to again encourage you to move to the
Brooks numbers. These numbers offer more capability than the modems at
most of the physical POPs (all except for Nashua), including V.90 and ISDN
protocols. And because they are served out of our Manchester office, they
will get you a more direct connection to our servers and to the Internet
backbone. If you are an IP user with a dynamically assigned IP address,
making the change from dialing a physical POP to the Brooks numbers just
requires you to change the phone number that you dial. If you have a
static IP address that's associated with a physical POP, contact us and we
can change it to (preferably) a dynamic address or a static address
assigned to the "bnh" area.
As always, make sure you verify with your telephone service that you
know what the charges will be when calling any of our numbers. We are not
the telephone company and we make no representation about telco charges.
Television
NH residents: you may want to tune into the Robert X. Cringely show
Nerds 2.0.1: A History of the Internet on New Hampshire Public Television
on Sunday, November 29, from 1PM to 4:30pm. MV is happy to be a sponsor of
this program.
Brochures
If you like our service adn want to help spread the word, please
contact us by email or phone, and we'll get you some brochures. Thanks!
MV Communications, Inc. (603) 629-0000