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Updated: 6 August 2002

Service disruptions coming!

[Photo: Chase Building machine room] There will be service disruptions on short notice sometime in August to all Chebucto services due to construction work on the Chase Building machine room. The machine room, shared by the Dalhousie University Mathematics Department and the Chebucto Community Net, is being expanded to accommodate the growing number of computers and related equipment. The computers will need to be physically relocated during the height of the construction, which is expected to last three days or so. There is not yet word on when exactly the construction will be taking place, though it is expected to be finished before classes start in September.

In addition to the service disruptions coming from the moving of the machines, there will be a delay in installing the digital phone lines necessary for the planned upgrade of the Chebucto Plus service to 56 K speed due to the construction. When more details on the construction are known, both this news page and the Chebucto Message of the Day will be updated with the new information.

56 K Update

Installation and testing of the new 56 K equipment will be delayed due to construction work planned for the Chase Building machine room (see story above). After construction is completed, digital phone lines can be installed and testing of the new equipment will begin.

Chebucto Plus 56 K logo The new 56 K digital phone equipment purchased in July will allow up to 96 users at a time to connect to the Chebucto Plus dialup service at 56 K speed, the maximum speed possible over a dialup connection. The 16 kg (36 lb) rack-mountable Ascend 6096 has 96 digital 56 K modems, kept cool by eight high-velocity fans.

Testing of the new Ascend 6096 will likely take several weeks before converting over Chebucto Plus from the current 33.6 K to full 56 K service. All speed user modems will be able to connect to the new Chebucto modems, but only 56 K user modems will get the full benefit of the higher speed. The Chebucto text service will not be affected by the upgrade.

Chebucto staff take safety training

The Chebucto Office will be closed Wednesday August 7th so that staff can take part in a one day Fall Safety course. The course was considered appropriate for safe working on the Chebucto Webcam, located on the top of Fenwick Place, the tallest building in Halifax.

Spam/virus filtering server soon ready

The new Chebucto spam and virus-filtering server is nearing the final stages of testing. Using Spam Assassin for spam mail filtering and F-Prot for virus mail filtering, the new server should dramatically decrease rubbish mail sent to Chebucto users. Plans are to send out an email to all users and give them the option of having unfiltered mail, having their spam and viruses shunted to a special folder for their later inspection or having their spam and viruses deleted outright.

Low-Cost Custom Web Addresses Now Available

Chebucto users, groups and businesses can now have low cost custom website and email addresses. For $20 a year or less, full details here, users can have a custom Chebucto Sub-Domain name.

Non-Profit groups on Chebucto can have the website address name.chebucto.org, where name would be replaced by the organization or group name. Small businesses on Chebucto can customize the website address name.chebucto.biz; individuals and families can customize name.chebucto.net with their family name; and Chebucto-based information resources can customize the web address name.chebucto.info.

Email aliases to registered Chebucto sub-domain names are also available for $10 per year per alias. These email aliases can redirect mail to any email account.

Membership Reward Plan continues

Chebucto is pleased to announce a new Membership Reward Plan open to all current Chebucto members. Full Details here.

For each new Sustaining or Family Sustaining member who tells us they were referred to us by you, we'll give you a $20 credit good towards your next Sustaining or Family Sustaining membership. "Word of mouth" advertising can now get you free internet: five referrals are good for a free Sustaining membership, including a year of our famous Chebucto Plus full graphical access.

Chebucto Users still tops in *.NS.CA SETI processing

SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, has been processing their radio telescope data with home users' computers for years now. Using an innovative screensaver which runs whenever the user computer is not in use, SETI has had more than 1,078,000 years of high quality computer processor time donated to it.

Of all the computer domains ending in the letters NS.CA, denoting Nova Scotia, chebucto.ns.ca now ranks number one, beating out both the government of Nova Scotia and the vast resources of EdNet, the schools network. Current stats here. Chebucto users have sent in more than 15,000 results, representing more than 32 years of CPU time that would otherwise have been wasted.

Outlook user email advisory

After the recent wave of viruses specifically targetting users of Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express email programs, and the constant stream of user complaints about randomly altered program settings and difficulty using the program, the Chebucto Community Net Office and the Chebucto Technical Committee recommend our users do not use either Outlook or Outlook Express as their email program.

Windows Users can find a selection of email programs available for download here and Macintosh users can find a selection of email programs here.

 

 

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