From admin@tlg.org Tue Apr 5 15:00:48 1994 Received: from localhost by fnord.tlg.org (8.3/wps.com-hackery) id PAA05768; Tue, 5 Apr 1994 15:00:43 -0700 From: tomj (Tom Jennings) Message-Id: <199404052200.PAA05768@tlg.org> Subject: TLG news, April 94 To: garden-list Date: Tue, 5 Apr 1994 15:00:41 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 4144 Status: O Where to start... Sprint, ahh sprint. We've had about 18 hours of downtime this month. Sorry for the scheduled testing without followups of the results. It's been triage here, if it's on fire it gets attention. Finally that seems to be over. The results: the problem with Sprint is procedural, ie. lack thereof. There were actual hardware problems, nearly all in their POP in Stockton CA, which is unattended. This past Saturday they arranged for a Metro Fiber tech to do stress-testing from the front-panel of our DSUs through to SPrint. Lines were very clean. We're still seeing a low but steady rate of errors accumulate in our head router,but I think it's a software problem in the router. Sprint is still unable to deal with problems cleanly. This is an ongoing story and I have yet to followup with Sprint about this. TLG itself. TLG has been growing at a rate faster than cash-on-hand has been increaseing. On paper, TLG is running positive; however cash lags receiveables. Some of our decisions from last year simply didn't scale; install overhead is eating cash. Things are not dire however. I am making some radical changes to the way TLG operates. To accomplish them I'm halting all new installs for the month of April, to let me catch up with work, receivables and documentation. I need to let some cash accumulate instead of it immediately going for more overhead. Some of the changes include: * Modem based TLG connections: The complete and utter end to the member-provided phone line and modem system. TLG will order lines and one brand of v.32bis modems (likely Intels) and when a newbie installs, they'll get a phone number. This eliminates: phone line install hassles. Get-your-modem-to-me hassles. Ugly piles of mismatched hardware. Support problems: if a members assigned line or modem dies, I give them another line to use. Instead of panicing to fix a member line (or delays when not fixed) I repair at my leisure. Less variables for newbies. Vastly simplified install process and documentation. * Dial-up IP, non-full-time will be offered. This will use TLG-owned modem banks on rotary phone lines. (These can also serve as backups for TLG members.) * Likely, eliminiation of field-beta-testing of new products, ie. V.FAST, which is proving to be not so good. WARNING: all of the V.FAST and V.TEBO modems seem unreliable, with more than half of them requiring full power cycling within the last month. I strongly UNRECOMMEND them. * New price for T1-connected resellers. This month I will be analyzing actual install and equipment costs, and looking at TLGs basic assumptions. Many things simply haven't scaled. Thigns that were occasional small hassles become a full-time job, such as monitoring new (phone, leased) line installs at multiple sites, babysitting unreliable leading-edge products, etc. I want to be able to support expirementation with new modems and such. The current arrangement basically promises the same up time for unreliable devices as for reliable ones. On this end, it's a calulated gamble that "reliable" devices won't need much attention. I need to get the accoutning up to speed. I have a new accountant coming in this week and we'll get a good handle on income and outgo. Income exceeds regular expenses by a healthy margin; however my cash is being eaten by unexpected overhead and receivable lag. For example, the TLG voicemail/trouble system is simply awaiting cash to buy the hardware. The software and design is complete. Plus I need to make things slow down. I've been killing myself here for seven months to get to this point of income > expenses. Tiem to slow down a bit. Towards the end of this month I'll have the new systems laid out and documented, and I'll remail the list with the news. -- The Little Garden, a San Francisco Bay Area Internetwork info@tlg.org A brochure and basic info. Anon. FTP: tlg.org modem-faq@tlg.org Modem-based service Frequently Asked Questions. ll-faq@tlg.org 56K/T1 service Frequently Asked Questions. order-form@tlg.org New service questionnaire admin@tlg.org Actual humans. Web: http://tlg.org/