X-Digest-Num: 7 Message-ID: <44114.7.44.959273823@eGroups.com> Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 10:19:28 -0500 (EST) From: Logical Language Group Subject: Lojban Central/Lojban archive site will be moving soon - pls comment X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 44 Content-Length: 5345 Lines: 96 I just got notice that Digex, which was bought several months ago, is shutting down its personal ISP services as of the end of the month. They are offering people smooth transition to their replacement merged ISP, but it has significantly different provisions, so I am considering several possibilities. Anyone who knows ISPs serving the DC area can feel free to make recommendations. Two I am checking out are CAIS and Radixnet. I am looking for shell capability if possible, since I use shell rather than Windows/PPP for most of my access, but John Cowan thinks this may not be necessary for LLG operations (though I know how to do very little from PPP accesses except browse the Web). The primary factor will probably be the Official Lojban archive, which has been at www.access.digex.net (I am told that whereever we move to, the old address will forward for 90 days both for email to me and for accesses to the site). We currenyly have somewhat less than 30Meg on that site, for which we have been paying $25/month or so on top of regular ISP charges. Some considerations can be made which will affect costs to LLG, but could also affect you who access the site. So I would like opinions, especially from overseas Lojbanists who may have fewer options or less robust net connections. 1. Some providers offer Web space but do not provide anonymous FTP access (a URL ftp//... invokes this kind of access). Is there anyone out there who cannot use Web access (http// URL) to access the Lojban pages, or do we need to be able to continue to support FTP to reach all our overseas supporters? 2. Since we are paying $1/megabyte, we have avoided enlarging the material hosted on the site except for things that we are pretty sure will be useful. I have a lot more stuff that could be uploaded, including old Ju'i Lobypli issues and text archives in various states of grammar validation. One ISP offers up to 50 Meg Web space as part of a package costing $70/month which is a BIG step up in cost, but it would also allow us to put more material up. $45/month is about what we make on 2 books sold, so we have to sell around 20-25 books in a year more to pay for this, with corresponding delays in breaking even on the book and gfinancing other books. 3. How important is the speed of connectivity to the LOjban Web site to you? We have several options with smaller ISPs which do not have anywhere near as high a throughput as Digex, which operates its own US-nationwide backbone at extremely high data rates. 4. Sould we consider getting our own address space - probably www.lojban.org? Some of the more expensive options include this as part of the package, especially if we pay a year at a time, but the nominal charges tend to be around $100 for setup, and $35/year to have the address registered. The advantage of course would be portability of the address if we have to move ISPs again, and of course name-recognition and the sense that Lojban and LLG are around to stay implicit in having a real address. But again, the money isn't trivial, and using the address requires that we rule out some of the cheapest ISP options that would not support such an address space. 5. In all likelihood I will try to gain the use of both lojban@ and lojbab@ for the new ISP, if such is offered. I know there have been people who suffered from typos or simply not noticing that the userid here ends with a b instead of an n (or not remembering). 6. We feel it is advantageous to the organization to maintain an official site that Cowan and I can easily access and maintain the files on, and which we have direct control over. This also makes it clear to people like hezekiah that we welcome other WWW pages in addition to Veijo's Finland site, which keeps a status as a European mirror and not-quite-official status as a result of the main site being whereever my account is. However, if people have arguments as to why we should do something different, let us hear them. 7. Note that this account is officially an LLG account and not my personal account, though I don't use a separate account for personal stuff. I am not sure that this matters much to our decision, since my personal use has always been incidental and secondary to my primary use of this account for Lojban support (Indeed Cowan practically dragged me into getting on the net several years ago to help support the Lojban community, when I was trying to avoid dealing with the Internet. At times he probably wishes I had stayed off net, since net activity tends to be an enormous time consumer to me, especially when I get into answering Lojban posts (which I try to avoid as a result). Again, I have to make decisions ASAP, but the old addresses will be usable via forwarding for a couple months. Let me know what you think. (This goes double for certain silent LLG Board members %^). lojbab ---- lojbab lojbab@access.digex.net Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc. 2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273 Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: ftp.access.digex.net /pub/access/lojbab or see Lojban WWW Server: href="http://xiron.pc.helsinki.fi/lojban/" Order _The Complete Lojban Language_ - see our Web pages or ask me.