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The Victoria Free-Net Report - Fall/95 |
The months immediately after the "great crash of '94" when our major
hard drive system failed were particularly "interesting". Although we
ended up not losing any data, we were appalled at the length of time it
took to solve the problem. We now own a tape back up system with the
capacity to handle our large data volumes. Backups are done daily,
Monday to Friday.
As soon as that crisis passed we were faced with another. Our old
friends at Camosun College were no longer able to support both our
demands and theirs on their inadequate 56K Internet connection. They
had to restrict the amount of bandwidth we used. So severely that our
main SUN Sparc 2 computer became bandwidth limited and couldn't cope
with the traffic volumes we were asking it to handle.
The Board and the technical committee decided to issue a request for
proposals to find another Internet supplier. This was a somewhat
lengthy process, so the British Columbia Systems Corporation were kind
enough to offer us an interim solution.
Our original equipment donation from the Telebit Corporation included
two NetBlazer router/terminal server devices. This was in response to
our original draft system design which separated the modem pool and
the computer system. This design was never implemented and we ended
up with the modem pool and the computer in the Camosun College
Lansdowne Campus machine room. This meant that the second NetBlazer
was surplus to our needs.
For the BCSC project, we immediately pressed it into service. It was
installed on the BC Systems network and the two routers were connected
with two telephone lines and four 28.8 modems operating in parallel.
This "pseudo 56K" connection sounds a bit bizarre, but actually
worked very well.
The successful bidder for our RFP was a consortium composed of
Softwords Research International and Pacific Interconnect. As a
result, we moved the Free-Net system to a new home on March 20th,
1995. We have now consolidated our office space and machine room at
4252 Commerce Circle in the Royal Oak Industrial Park area. With the
equipment in the next room, it is much easier for our volunteer office
staff to keep an eye on it. They can handle most of the day to day
situations and our volunteer technical committee members are always
ready to step in when they can't.
We are very grateful for Pacific InterConnect's donation of a 112K
"slice" of their 10M Internet bandwidth. Our monitoring tells us that
this is sufficient for our purposes at the moment.
Our next big event was our very successful Casino in April. This
raised sufficent money for us to nearly double our modem lines from 22
to 40. As a part of this process, we installed an 8 port serial card
in our second NetBlazer and that device is now in daily use managing
a part of our modem pool. We also purchased a stock of items for sale
as a fund raiser. Have you got your Free-Net t-shirt or pin yet? Both
feature our lampost and computer logo and make excellent gifts to
yourself or others. Contact Audrey Copping
(aa014@freenet.victoria.bc.ca) to place an order.
So, now we have 40 phone lines, a sufficiently large, stable Internet
connection, a well organized, air conditioned machine room and some
office space and office computers. Everything should be rosy - well
things actually did hum along quite nicely for a month or two!
We have, however, decided that when you run a community computer
(Free-Net) system, something is always maxed out. As soon as everyone
discovered that we'd changed our modem phone number as part of our
move and now had a system that was performing much more reliably,
frustrated users started to return and, of course, we have for several
years now been adding new users at a rate of 80 to 150 a week. We are
now passing the 15,000 mark.
Our average number of logins in a 24 hour period is 5,000 and we often
have between 55 and 60 simultaneous users on the system. We process a
flood of e-mail every day. A lot of you, it seems, are addicted to
high volume listserves. Our Sparc 2 computer that has served us so
well since 1992 is rapidly becoming overloaded. It can readily cope
with 30 to 40 simultaneous users and system loads of 3 to 4. System
loads have recently been peaking at over 10. We were all starting to
notice a degredation in performance. System response time slowed and
mail took longer to be delivered. A normal volume for the mail queue is
3 to 4 hundred items. When you start getting 1,500 hundred pieces of
mail in there we have a problem. The processor gets swamped and mail
doesn't get delivered until much later. Indeed, we were even starting
to lose some mail and frustrating users with a lack of reliability.
We do have a second machine, a Sparc IPX. This machine is roughly
comparable in power to our Sparc 2. It is currently running our Usenet
news feed and we plan to move our gopher and Web servers to it. This
will help, but probably not that much.
The Board has approved the purchase of a new Sparc 20 level machine.
This will be the most significant purchase we have made and we are
asking all of our users to contribute generously towards the
approximately $20,000 cost.
The problem with the system loads wouldn't wait for the results of a
fund raising drive, however. Thus we have recently installed $2,000
worth of additional memory for the Sparc 2. This takes it from 32M to
64M. We expect this to alleviate the problem in the short term. Each
user gets about 1M of work space when they are signed on. As soon as
you got more than 32 users on the system at once, the machine had to
swap back and forth to disk, which created a lot of processor
overhead. 64M of main memory is the limit for the Sparc 2 class of
machines.
For several months this spring and summer the terminals at the
downtown Greater Victoria Public Library were not available. This was
a technical problem which was rectified in late August. There are
three public terminals and a fourth is about to be add ed. Also, over
the next month each of the five branches of the library (Esquimalt,
Oak Bay, Nellie McLung, Saanich-Victoria and Bruce Hutchinson) will
have a Free-net terminal available. When the new branch at the Juan de
Fuca recreation centre opens th ere will be one there as well. These
are in addition to the terminals already operational at Camosun
(Lansdowne and Interurban libraries) and UVic (McPherson library).
Also over the next month or two the Vancouver Island Regional Library
System will be adding terminals in their Sidney, Brentwood and Sooke
branches. Please note that all of our public terminals are provided by
the institutions themselves, they do not belong to the Free-Net.
This is all very good news, but it does mean that our system loads are
going to keep climbing even without the addition of more dial up
lines. We feel that the new larger computer is the only viable
solution.
You may have noticed recently that we have added a significant number
of new Special Interest Group (SIG) areas. There are also a number of
new general information provider sections appearing. This is the
result of the fine work of a new committee of volunteers supported by
the Free-Net office. There are other jobs that need attention, if you
are interested in volunteering, contact the office at 727-7057 or
hq@freenet.victoria.bc.ca. We particularly need individuals with skills
in fund raising.
The familiar menus and general environment that you see when you
connect to the Free-Net are a part of the "FreePort" program. We have
about 18 months to go on our 5 year license for this program. It does
the job, but it is not being maintained by its developers and has a
number of problems. We are not planning to renew the license (it costs
$850 US) Instead we have decided to evaluate a Canadian solution. The
"Chebucto Suite" developed by David Truman at Dalhousie University in
Halifax we think will give us a much improved system. Besides, it's
Canadian and it is free to all community networks (at least in Canada
- I don't know about elsewhere) Several Canadian community networks
are already using it. (Halifax, Blue Sky, Hamilton-Wentworth and
possibly others) We will be receiving the first official release of
the software soon and will begin testing it in our environment.
As many of you know, the Victoria Free-Net Association was started in
June 1992 by about 30 people. The 30-40 active volunteers and
supporters have always constituted the membership of the Association
which ran the Free-Net service. At the 1994 AGM we passed a motion of
intent to revise the constitution and bylaws to allow for general
membership. This has now been done. Membership is now open to everyone
at a cost of $25 per year. Let me hasten to assure everyone that this
has nothing to do with user accounts on the Free-Net itself. Users are
not members and we are still not charging for accounts. Members may
vote and run for office. We are also exploring other possible
membership benefits. We hope to announce these shortly.
So, if you support the Free-Net and believe in what we are doing for
our community, please join us as a member of the Association. Send
your check to the Free-Net office (4252 Commerce Circle, Victoria V8Z
4M2) Better yet, drop in to one of the regular open house coffee
parties that the staff is hosting and join then. You will receive a
membership card valid for one year from the date you join. Watch the
login screen for the open house announcements.
Shortly, when you sign on to the Free-Net, you will see a note saying
something like "this connection brought to you by the XYZ company".
These "sponsored hours" are another fund raising initiative.
As always, the Free-Net is desperately short of money. We really can't
afford to do what we are doing. We would like to run the system with
an administrator and some part time office and technical support. We
thought we would be at that stage long ago, but in to-day's fiscal
climate these things don't come easily.
I have to report to you that now, for the first time ever, our monthly
income is not sufficient to cover the cost of our phone lines. With 40
phone lines that bill is about $2800 every month. Now we aren't about
to go bankrupt or anything like that, but this is not a situation that
can be sustained over the long term. We cannot look to occasional
infusions of money to carry this, we must have a sustainable source of
income. If a significant fraction of our 15,000 users each gave us $10
or $20 a month, we would be in a much better position.
So, everyone, the continued health and growth of the Victoria Free-Net
depends on your support. We will do what we can to raise the
Free-Net's profile and increase the level of support in the community.
It does, however, come down to a simple fact - it may be a "Free-Net"
but it isn't a free lunch - if you want it, you have to support it.,
by your volunteerism and/or your dollars.
Gareth R. Shearman
President
Victoria Free-Net Association
As we approach the end of our third year of operation (we opened our
first modem line for public access on November 17th, 1992) it is time
to review where we are now and where we are headed. The last 18 months
have seen many challenges for the Free-Net Association, the non-profit
society that runs the Free-Net.