Last Thursday (25/Jun/98) we added a further 30 modems to our out-of-town modem pools. This should eliminate those rare occasions when all our out of town lines were busy. The pool is shared between our sites at Culcairn, Holbrook, Gerogery, Indigo, Corowa and Yackandandah.

Although the upgrade was scheduled to happen between 7AM and 8AM, Telstra engineers encountered some exchange problems and the upgrade was not completed until 9:30am. We apologise for any inconvenience caused, but are confident that the benefits will outweigh the short term inconvenience.

More upgrades. Next Tuesday (30/Jun/98) we hope to see the Telstra engineers again when they install another 2 megabit line for a further 30 56K modems at our Albury site. Whilst we are not currently experiencing congestion on the Albury modem pools, usage is increasing and we will need those lines soon!

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Even more upgrades. Mid to late July, we expect to be doubling the facilities at MtBeauty. The Alpine shire has really taken to the Internet, and the server we installed, whilst it has plenty of spare capacity, is running short on lines. It hasn't experienced congestion yet, but it is right at the threshold of our "safety margin".

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A note on "congestion"
Most Internet providers consider that until they get a lot of calls about busy signals, and irate users who cannot connect, they don't have any congestion problem. Here at Albury Local Internet, we work differently. We constantly monitor our modem pools. Every 5 minutes of every hour of every day, we check the status of all kinds of things, including the number of SPARE LINES. When the number of SPARE lines gets too low for our comfort, we add more.

We aim to have enough modems for ALL our subscribers to be able to get on line when THEY want to, not after an hour of dialling waiting for a free line. The "head space" or number of free lines we consider acceptable depends on the size of the modem pool, but I like to keep at least 10% "spare". Obviously, this does not GUARANTEE you will get a line every time (we have many thousand accounts), but we'll never get ALL our users on-line at one time! The vast majority of our users have never experienced a genuine BUSY tone with us. On Friday May 29th, a telstra technician "accidentally" locked out our entire MtBeauty modem pool whilst he was conducting tests, which resulted in everyone calling our MtBeauty site getting busy signals from 2:45pm until 8:30pm when we finally convinced Telstra to actually DO something about it.

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Speaking of MtBeauty, we recently managed to isolate and resolve the intermittent fault that has plagued that server for quite some time.

A small percentage of calls were hanging on even after the caller had disconnected. After extensive testing in conjunction with Telstra and the manufacturers of our modem equipment, and having exhausted all possibilities of exchanges, lines, modems and settings, the problem has been traced, identified and fixed. This has also allowed us to change the inactivity timer from 5 minutes back to our usual 42 minutes.

The MtBeauty server is now running under the same parameters as our other sites, ie:

• Calls are recorded to the nearest second.
• Calls have their volume of traffic measured (in bytes)
• Calls which have been TOTALLY INACTIVE for 42 minutes will be automatically terminated.
• Users can select which charging plan they wish to use:
  Volume plan ($2.20/Hr + 35c/Mb) or Flat-Rate plan ($5.00/Hr, no volume charge).
  To change your plan, visit http://www.albury.net.au/whitepages/

Please note: SOME USERS HAVE NOT BEEN DISCONNECTING THEIR CALLS and rely on the 5-minute inactivity timer to disconnect them. IF you are one of these people, please correct your procedures NOW. Failure to do so will see your bills increase substantially!

This is a perfect time to remind you that DISCONNECTING your modem from the phone line when not actually in use will not only protect your modem and computer from lightning damage, but will also ensure you are disconnected from our server (and thus not staying on-line in error or by accident).

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Even MORE updates!
During June, we added two more local call areas. One for those between and south of Wangaratta and Myrtleford (Carboor, Moyhu etc) and one for those between Wangaratta and Yarrawonga (Peechelba, Wilby, Tungamah etc). See our local call area map at http://www.albury.net.au/on-line/localcall.htm.