M V ' s C o m m u n i c a t i o n January/February 1994 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! The lost month You may have noticed nothing in your mailbox from us for the last couple of months. Various crises, some of which are mentioned later on, had us tied up, and we elected to put off the billing and the newsletter for a month. So (unless you just joined us recently), this month you'll receive invoices for December 1993 and January 1994. Changes in dial-ins The way you login when you dial mv directly has changed. (We've mentioned this online, and so most people should know already.) For online and UUCP callers, you'll now get an initial Connect: prompt. At that prompt, online callers should type the word mv to get access to the mv system. UUCP callers should modify your scripts to send the word uucp at this prompt. After this, you'll get the login: and pass- word: prompts as before. SLIP and PPP callers, as well as those who connect via InfoPath and telnet, are unaffected by this change. Telephone Tales In mid-December 1993 we added some 2400 baud access numbers in front of the normal access number in our hunt group. Little did we know what was to come of that change. Often callers would receive BUSY signals when many lines were free, and often they could get in by dialing a number in the middle of the group. Reports to NYNEX yielded nothing, as the problem seemed to come and go. After a month we were advised by NYNEX that a change in the classification of our hunt group would be necessary. The day of this reclassification arrived, and with it came two days of near telephone outage at MV. Our lines at first answered with an "out of service" message and later did not hunt at all, so we advised callers to try individual numbers. At the end of the second day, NYNEX discovered a peculiarity in the configuration, something apparently only possible at the Merrimack Central Office, and by even- ing we were back on the air with fully hunting telephone lines. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story. About three weeks later we asked to have our two hunt groups combined, so that we could provide all offerings on all telephone lines. When this date arrived the same thing occurred: some lines gave "out of service" mes- sages, and the others didn't hunt. By the end of the day, NYNEX put the lines back the way they began the day, and the combining of the hunt group has been rescheduled. We have an extra large bottle of aspirin standing by. So is there any good news, telephone-wise? Despite the troubles, we do have some good news to report. We are now able to offer all types of access (online, UUCP, and SLIP/PPP) through both sets of hunt groups, and within a few days both groups will be combined into one. We have also established a new number in the Manchester exchange. If you are local to our main number, it's best to call the 424 or 429 exchange. However, if you are not local to the main number, but are local to Manchester, you can now call 645-NETS (645-6387) to gain local dialing access to MV. (The same can be said for our Nashua number, 888-NETS). Groups On February 24, 1994, the Northern New England Unix Users Group will hold its meeting via Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for the second time. If you have access to IRC, tune in at 7:30 on that date, and join the #nneuug channel. The first IRC meeting was free wheeling and fun, and we're looking forward to a rousing session this time around. A new organization, Electronic Frontiers New Hampshire, is in its formative stages. Among its goals are the pursuit of civil liberty issues as they relate to Internetting, and opening up access to state-level government to users of the nets. A kick-off meeting was held in January, with a presentation by Shari Steele of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Send an email note to efnh-info@mv.mv.com for an autoreply with brief information about the organization and its elec- tronic mailing lists, or write to efnh@mv.mv.com for direct contact with organizers. Policy for users under 18 Because of the breadth of information available on the Internet, and the responsibilities of being an Internet member, there are con- cerns about access to the networks by young people. MV has no way of restricting access to information, nor do we feel it's our place to do so. So, MV requires authorization from a parent or guardian in order to open accounts for anyone less than 18 years of age, and such accounts are billed to that authority. It isn't our intention to prohibit people younger than 18 from having access; in fact, we think there are many valuable resources and opportunities on the net for young people. But we think it's appropriate to leave that decision up to parents or guardians. Changes in billing Up until now, MV has had a pretty liberal approach (sometimes unintentionally) to allowing access in advance of payment. Because of ever-increasing demands on service, we are going to make some slight changes to our billing policy. The most significant change is that we will be requiring new users to make a deposit against their bill, and this deposit will have to be received before their initial three free hours is over. We don't mean to be onerous about this, but we've found that the long lead time for first bill for new users means that some 50 to 60 percent of our users are new and unbilled, meaning that you folks, the current users, are paying for them. (It's tough on us, too!). The second change is that we will be billing the monthly account minimum for the next month at the time we send out the monthly bill. This will start for the bills covering February, meaning that those bills will include the March minimum. Usage in excess of the minimum will be billed on the following invoice. .