newsletter://mv.com November 1997 K56flex access is here in Nashua By the time you read this, our K56flex access should be up and available for use in the Nashua location. This access is provided via a dialin number (886-7124) that is separate from our other hunt group numbers in Nashua, and supports both K56flex and ISDN calls. K56flex is one of the two competing so-called 56K dialup technologies. This one is from Rockwell (see www.nb.rockwell.com/K56flex and www.k56.org); the other is US Robotic's X2 protocol. It's expected that both of these pro- tocols will be superseded by an eventual ITU standard, and that there will be upgrade paths to that standard from both K56flex and X2. If you have a K56flex-capable modem, this access can give you download connect rates up to 56Kbps, as opposed to the current maximum of 33.6Kbps given by V.34 modems. This protocol is asymmetric, using the higher rate in one direction (from MV to you), and a standard V.34 connection in the other direction. Thus your maximum upload rate (i.e., from you to the Internet) will still be 33.6Kbps. For most users this is not a concern, since the usual application involves retrieving data rather than sending it. As with all modems, your actual connection rate will vary and will almost certainly be less than the maximum. The rate will depend largely on how your call is carried by the telephone company. Your call may pass through any number of pieces of telephone switching equipment and wherever there is a signal conversion in that equipment, there will be a reduction in the maximum con- nection rate that you can achieve. However, we expect that most users will experience higher connection rates using K56flex modems dialing the new 56Kb access number than with normal 33.6 access. The new number also supports ISDN calls. Be aware of any telephone charges you will incur by making ISDN calls, particularly data connections. In New Hampshire, circuit switched ISDN data calls (i.e., 64Kbps digital con- nections) are charged a per-minute rate, as well as a charge per connection. On the other hand, if your equipment supports it you may be able to make data-over-voice ISDN calls at 56Kbps, which will be charged at the same rate as other voice lines in your location and on your bill (i.e. if your other voice lines have measured local service, your DOV calls will be measured ser- vice; if your other voice lines are unmeasured local calling, your DOV ISDN calls will also be unmeasured). Note that MV makes no representations about any telephone charges incurred by your calls; and information presented by MV (here or elsewhere) should be used as fodder for discussion with your telephone company. K56flex in other locations We originally expected the same K56flex/ISDN access to be available in Dover on November 12, too. Unfortunately, at the last minute Bell Atlantic informed us that PRI service would not be available in Dover for some months, due to facilities shortages there. (PRI is a digital service we need in order to support ISDN and voice calls). As an alternative, we will be ins- talling new access in Dover via T1, which can provide the K56flex access but not the ISDN service. Bell Atlantic has given us an earliest install date of December 7 for this new service, but has promised to upgrade it to PRI when it is again available, probably in March 1998. We don't have definite information for other locations at this time, but we will continue to post updates to the mv.forum.general newsgroup, as well as in the "news" area on our web page (go to www.mv.com, click on "Extended Information for MV Users", and you'll see the news option in the Announce- ments section. Server news MAIL: In October, as many of you know, we replaced the mail and POP server. This replacement was partially to solve some nagging problems with the old one, and partially to move to a faster system with more disk space and to upgrade the operating system software. For the most part the move went well, and the new server has indeed been robust and stable. However, there were more users than we expected who were using erroneous configuration information to access the mail and POP services. This erroneous configura- tion generally consisted of referring to the underlying machine name (i.e. bort.mv.net) rather than the server name (such as mail.mv.net). It might be prudent to review your configuration and make sure you are using correct server names: see below for some common configuration items. NEWS/NNTP: This month we're working on a new Usenet news server. This news server should be up and ready for internal testing by the end of November, and online for general use soon after that. The new news server will have about 4 times the disk space of the present server, and that will allow us to have much higher retention times on the news articles. As was true with the mail server, it's important that you use the proper server name when accessing news - don't use the underlying system name or the IP address. If you use the server name, when we put the new server online you will then be accessing it without having to change any of your settings. WEB: In October we added another 4GB of disk to our web server. We also added proxy capability to the web server. A proxy server, should you choose to use it, acts as an intermediary for your requests. The proxy server will cache frequently-requested information so that it can give you that informa- tion quickly, rather than having to fetch the original copy from its source on the Internet each time. You may not want to use this all the time; how- ever if you know (for instance) that there is a new copy of a popular software package that you want to download, it would make sense to use the proxy server to fetch it. If you want to use it, configure your browser to use a proxy server of proxy.www.mv.net. A little-known fact is that we run a "secure" web server on top of the normal server. A secure server uses RSA encryption of the data that is sent between the browser and the server, assuming that the client browser supports the encryption. If you have a web page in the www.mv.com tree (e.g., www.mv.com/users/mem) and if you are using forms (e.g. via form-submit), you can use the secure server for the same web data. Because of the way that the encryption works, the URL that you use for the secure server MUST begin with www.mv.com - URLs with other domain names will not work even if they are an alias for data in the www.mv.com tree. Simply use https: instead of http: for any URL where you want to use the secure server. You should probably use https: only where the form is active, rather than keeping the client in secure mode for all of your web pages. Server names for IP users Here's a review of some of the servers that you should use for your IP account. You may want to check your settings to make sure you are using these names. Nameservers(DNS): 199.125.85.1 and 199.125.85.2 . Most software lets you put in two nameserver addresses; if you only have a place for one nameserver, use either one of these. POP (for retrieving your mail via POP protocol): pop.mv.net Mail or SMTP: mail.mv.net Usenet news (nntp): news.mv.net Web server: www.mv.com Proxy web server (if desired): proxy.www.mv.net Note that for the several of the above servers, you may be using a server name such as pop-xxx.mv.net, where xxx is a three-letter code corresponding to the MV location you dial into. e.g., pop-lnh.mv.net would be the name for a POP server if you dial into Litchfield, New Hampshire. POP, Mail, and News server names of that form are also correct. Billing: this and the next This bill covers service through the end of October, 1997. Although we have recently been issuing bills every two months, we expect to have another billing out next month to cover November service. MV Communications, Inc....PO Box 4963, Manchester, NH 03108....(603) 629-0000 .