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Eskimo North Hardware - July 11, 1998



Unix Servers




Communications Servers

The communications servers provide physical RS-232 connections for the modems allowing connections to our hosts or SLIP and PPP protocol connections. Seattle1, seattle2, seattle3, and seattle4 are Xylogics Annex-3 communications servers equipped with 64 ports each and 10-base-T.




Modems

The V.34 speed modem pool is a mixture of US Robotics Sportsters, Motorola Modem Surfer, PPI, Best Data Smart One and one Boca Modem. We had ten at one point but all but one of the Boca modems have died. It presently is about 40% 28.8K and 60% 33.6K though in practice the lines won't support much faster than 28.8K owing to the distance from the central office. We also have a 56K K-56flex and V.90 offering that uses the services of a port wholesaler. The hardware used for this service is Livingston Portmaster-4 and Portmaster-3 digital communications servers with Lucent Technology modems. The 56K service is available in many major cities across the country.




Network Equipment




Future Plans

I write this with some trepidation because the upgrade path that we took over the last two years diverged quite radically from what I had originally anticipated. I had not anticipated the rapid growth in web traffic, Usenet News, mail volume. I knew there would be growth but I had no idea it would be as fast as it was. I also did not anticipate 56k modems becoming a reality so soon. As a consequence, we ended up taking one machine that used to handle client mail, incoming network mail, list expansion, web services, and ftp service, and putting those services on three web servers, one of which still handles the function of ftp and three mail servers. In other words, six machines replaced the function of one due to large growth in volume of traffic associated with those services.

My original plan to achieve network redundancy was changed by the need for more bandwidth. As a result we have gone to dual T1's to Sprint rather than peering with Access One for backup purposes. We also route some local traffic to other local ISPs via frame relay now. Our 56k offering presently is through a port reseller, MegaPOP and uses a separate T3 backbone network.

That said these are some concerns and some things I am currently planning on doing to address them. They are not set in stone, or even thick mud. They may change before they are implemented.

Eskinews, the news server is currently on a 4/670MP platform. Several problems exist with that platform. SparcLinux has a bug that prevents it from working with two CPU modules. Consequently we have this machine equipped with only two CPUs instead of four (there are two CPUs per module). These same CPUs can be used in an SS-10 or SS-20 without a problem. If the bug in SparcLinux is not resolved in the near term we may move Eskinews to an SS-20 to allow us to use four CPUs. The higher bus speed of an SS-20 would also improve performance. Even if the bug is resolved, Eskinews may still be moved owing to the huge power consumption and heat dissipation of the 4/670MP. The cost of electricity is going up and the cost of hardware is coming down and at some point it's just not going to make sense to keep paying the electric bill on the old hardware.

The router CEC could use a faster CPU. This would improve latency during heavy traffic conditions. At some point I intend to upgrade the CEC and the software. The newer software allows more flexibility in filtering and also has support for IPv6 which at some point is going to become a necessity.

The load on eskimo due to NFS traffic to feed the three web servers is fairly significant at times degrading interactive shell performance. We also have a problem with not being able to enforce disk quota limits on a users ftp directory and mail spool effectively because they are on separate machines. In order to address both issues I am planning on putting together a machine to act as a dedicated file server. It will either be a high-end Pentium based or Alpha based machine running Linux using probably four 9gb drives in one large stripped partition. The machine will be equipped with FDDI so that it can sit directly on the FDDI backbone. This will remove the NFS load from Eskimo allowing all of the available CPU and bus bandwidth to be available to users. It will provide files to both Eskimo users and the web, ftp, and mail servers much faster owing to a stripped partition, direct FDDI access, and Linux's disk I/O cacheing scheme. It will eliminate the problem of enforcing quotas on mail and ftp and simplify the NFS configuration here considerably.

I want to replace the existing analog modem pool entirely with digital modems. While 56k is now available to Seattle customers via the MegaPOP offering, they do not have a presence in Tacoma and Everett where we also have a significant client base. The largest hold-up is finding a carrier that will provide us with ISDN PRI lines necessary to feed the digital equipment at a reasonable rate without a LONG term commitment. Most CLEC's seem to want a 3-year contract and given how much things have changed in the last two, I am not comfortable being locked in that long.

I am anticipating several methods of access becoming significant over the coming years. Many people are familiar with a new offering by telco's called DSL in various flavors, ADSL, RADSL, etc. DSL is extremely sensitive to cable conditions and this limits it's usability. Probably 25% of the market COULD be served by DSL and in my view a much smaller percentage will be. DSL is one of those technologies that sounds good on paper and for some people who are close to the telephone companies central office, will be a good deal. But to those farther out, the speed advantages rapidly tradeoff for reliability problems. Most flavors of DSL are also asymmetrical, they allow a fast download speed but relatively slow upload speed making them ideal for end users doing things like web browsing but inappropriate for servers. They are subject to cross-talk problems and thus thruput can be highly variable depending upon conditions. For this reason they are really not the rock-solid technology you would want to use for commercial services. Still, it's a cheap technology so where reliability isn't an extremely important factor, ADSL may be a very cost effective way to get lots of bandwidth. I am interested in this market and I am researching the best way to go about connecting into the telcos ATM cloud so that we can offer it.

Cable modems are another high speed technology becoming available and one that I truly dread because they are introducing HUGE security problems on the Internet. There are two big problems with cable modems that are security related and there are also performance related concerns. From a security standpoint the biggest problem is that every user with a cable modem can see the traffic of every other user on the same cable segment. Thus any PC with a readily available sniffer program can capture logins and passwords and credit card numbers and web viewing habits and private e-mail and God only knows what else, of every other user on that same cable segment. This is ICKY ICKY ICKY. YUCK! The second security problem with cable modems is that most cable companies are only providing the end users with a single dynamically assigned address and as a result, end users are making heavy use of proxy servers such as Wingate and not properly securing them. This is providing hackers with a huge pool of vulnerable machines to use for IP laundering allowing them to hide their true point of origin easily. The non-security related problems with cable modems are that the bandwidth you get is shared with every other user on the same segment, thus as the cable companies start to sell more of these, people that paid through the nose for their hardware are going to discover declining thruput. Also, most cable modems, like ADSL are asymmetrical allowing fast downloads and slow uploads.

Cable modems are going to create a big market for security solutions such as virtual private network. A role that we could perform is to setup a method by which a user with a cable modem can establish an encrypted connection to a host here acting like a virtual private network with a secure gateway to the Internet here. This would allow a user to do all the things they would normally do in a secure manner without requiring special secured protocols for every function they perform. I don't have the details hammered down but I expect there are some VPN products that could be made to function in this environment and it is an area of interest because, like DSL, cable modems will offer cheap bandwidth for some users and if the security problems can be overcome they may be quite attractive for some applications.

Cable modems and DSL are technologies that people are largely familiar with but also in the works are a lot of really spiffy wireless products and services. The idea of being able to take a laptop anywhere and have high-speed connectivity appeals to me as a user greatly. The idea of being able to connect to my clients without telco's or cable companies mucking it up inbetween us appeals to me greatly from the perspective of an ISP. So this wireless technology is something I am very very interested in. There are products that operate in the 2.4ghz band without licenses now at T1 speeds. These are presently above $1,000 but the costs are expected to drop below $1,000 by year end according to a number of sources that I have read. The F.C.C. made 300mhz of bandwidth available in the 5Ghz spectrum for various wireless data services and this will make a whole new category of high speed wireless products possible that are faster, smaller, and eventually cheaper. Higher frequencies mean smaller antennas and so compact designs will be possible. There are some companies creating products now that operate up around 38ghz and are capable of huge speeds, some as fast as OC3 (155mb/s) speeds. There is a company planning on offering a 45mb/s from platforms kept suspended in the sky. They do not say exactly how they are planning on doing this but they seem quite serious about it. Motorola's Iridium low-earth orbit satellite cellular system will offer voice and low-speed data service globally. The projected rates are about 30% above current cellular prices. This is an expensive option but for people that have a true need to be connected anywhere this will provide that capability and there are others planning similar projects. Realistically, the 2.4ghz and 5ghz products are the most likely to be economically feasible in the near future and those are products I am looking into as I would like to be able to provide a wireless option for our clients.

The World Wide Web is a phenomena that fascinates me and one that I think has huge potential for the growth and betterment of mankind literally world-wide. I am very interested in making it's capabilities available to you as not only a viewer but as an author. Unlike most of the big corporations that just want you to be a consumer, I want to give everybody the opportunity and encouragement to share their ideas with the world via the world wide web. Electronic commerce also has large commercial appeal due to sheer efficiency. Many retailers are closing their physical stores and doing business exclusively via the web because of the economies involved, others are finding web sales to be an increasingly large portion of their business. It is my intent to do everything possible to make the web available to as many people as possible from an authoring standpoint and it is my intent to provide the tools necessary to use the web for commerce here. We are working on a database solution, an SSL solution, and we are enabling referral capabilities so that those of you that advertise on the web can find out where hits are coming from. Right now, every user account on Eskimo has the ability to make web pages available on the world wide web and there are no data export fees. We don't punish you for creating a popular web site here!