Executive Director's Report April, 1998 =========================== April 15, 1998 By Christopher L. Cope (execdir@freenet.carleton.ca) Contents: 1. Funding and Public Relations Update 2. NCF Administration 3. Member Services and Future Initiatives 1. Funding Update ================= a) Donation Data - New Registrations ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We continue to be considerably under our target for new registrations although at 54.1%, we registered the highest ever percentage of new members donating. The number of new registrations was under budget by 55% this month, but the financial impact is not as large, at -14%, largely because of the exceptionally high percentage of donors. On a Year-to-date basis, we are under Budget financially by 16% even though we apparently over-estimated the number of new members by 55% Avg. No. No. % Of Avg. Regist New Budget Regist Memb $ Budget Regist Donat'n Memb. (No.) Var Donate Donate Amount ($) Var Donat'n All New ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ All'97 6,923 2,295 33.2% $47,395 $72,000 -34% $20.65 $6.85 Avg'97 577 191 33.2% $ 3,950 $ 6,000 -34% $20.65 $6.85 Jan. 305 666 -54% 145 47.5% $ 3,308 $ 4,262 -22% $22.81 $10.85 Feb 254 562 -55% 132 52.0% $ 3,246 $ 3,594 -10% $24.59 $12.78 Mar. 242 538 -55% 131 54.1% $ 2,965 $ 3,441 -14% $22.63 $12.25 Apr. 526 $ 3,364 May 442 $ 2,826 Jun. 512 $ 3,279 Jul. 823 $ 5,268 Aug. 750 $ 4,800 Sep. 767 $ 4,908 Oct. 696 $ 4,454 Nov. 529 $ 3,387 Dec. 413 $ 2,642 ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ YTD'98 801 7,224 408 50.9% $ 9,519 $46,225 $23.33 $11.88 Avg'98 267 589 -55% 136 50.9% $ 3,173 $ 3,766 -16% $23.33 $11.88 c) Donation Data - Renewals ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our prediction for the number of renewing members is more accurate, and this month was within 1%. At 61%, The percentage of members donating is less than the 70% anticipated and the average donation at $24.64 is significantly less that the $32.50, which was predicted (first time renewals were forecast at $20). On a year-to-date basis the number of renewals is off by 7%, and the financial impact is a $10,558 shortfall (-32%). No. % Of Avg. Renwl No. Budget Renwl Renwl $ Budget Renwl Donate Renwl (No.) Var Donate Donate Amount ($) Var Donatn All Ren ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ All'97 13,235 18,000 8,611 65.1% $186,716 $202,500 -8% $21.68 $14.11 Avg'97 1,103 1,500 718 65.1% $ 15,560 $ 16,875 -8% $21.68 $14.11 Jan. 1,544 1,734 -11% 965 62.5% $23,167 $27,123 -15% $24.01 $13.36 Feb 1,320 1,470 -10% 869 65.8% $21,415 $37,467 -43% $24.64 $14.57 Mar. 1,620 1,601 -1% 899 55.5% $22.759 $34,426 -34% $25.32 $14.22 Apr. 1,616 $36,535 May 1,336 $34,662 Jun. 478 $23,953 Jul. 206 $ 8,832 Aug. 188 $ 4,551 Sep. 192 $ 4,307 Oct. 174 $ 4,233 Nov. 132 $ 3,643 Dec. 886 $ 8,656 ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ YTD'98 4,484 10,012 2,733 61.0% $67,341 $228,388 $24.64 $15.02 AVG'98 1,495 1,602 -7%% 911 61.0% $22,447 $ 33,005 -32% $24.64 $15.02 c) Membership Activity in February: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The number of FreeNet members increased slightly this month to 21,000. The member to line ratio is essentially unchanged and stands at 104:1. |Member | Current |To line| Actual |Ratio |Number Forecast Number Number Number # of % inc.| |Of New No. of Members Members Members Members -dec. |Lns :1 |Members Members Renewed Un-arch Archvd. ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~|~~~~~~~| ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ May. 62,877 n/a|169 372| 372 1,831 0 0 Jun. 43,170 -31.3%|169 255| 654 654 18 20,361 Jul. 28,280 -34.5%|169 167| 651 605 103 7,919 Aug. 27,980 - 1.1%|169 166| 484 448 68 7,739 Sep. 22,996 -17.8%|169 136| 467 320 100 6,145 Oct. 21,527 - 6.4%|169 127| 314 248 76 1,870 Nov. 21,361 -0.8%|169 126| 234 529 266 61 501 Dec. 21,125 -1.1%|169 125| 193 413 728 42 421 Jan. 20,996 -0.6%|169 124| 305 666 1,544 16 495 Feb. 20,970 -0.1%|201 104| 254 562 1,320 74 343 Mar. 21,000 0.1%|201*104| 242 538 1,620 13 316 * The number of lines is taken at 201, being our original 169 lines plus the new 32 Extended Access lines, which became operational in February. e) Member Usage Data ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PPP usage, is essentially unchanged this month on our main modem lines with peak usage at 52 simultaneous PPP sessions. Usage of the Extended Access lines however continues to climb and in March, we peaked at 26 sessions. The daily peak on the EA lines is at approximately 10 PM., while the main modem pool stays at peak from about 9 PM. until after Midnight. This suggests that these numbers can be added for a combined PPP peak of 78 during March. The number of weekly sessions, which had been declining gradually from a high of approximately 80,000 in October, to a low of 71,271 last month, increased slightly to 72,417. Similarly, the number of unique user logins increased from 9,233 to 9,333 this month. In the two month window (Feb 5th - Apr 5th) 433 unique users accessed the Mitel-Extended Access lines, for a total of 30,590 sessions. As this period represents usage beginning on the launch-date, a simple average will not be valid. It appears however that we're going to be getting around 5,000 sessions weekly, which gets us back to the usage level in October. As tools are developed to track this information automatically, rather than harvesting the information manually, I will include this information in the table. No. Of No. Of | Max # Avg # Max % Avg.% | Avg. Weekly Unique | PPP PPP PPP PPP | No. Sessions Users | Users Users Usage Usage | Busy ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ | ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ | ~~~~ Sep. | 9.3% 0.7% | Oct. 80,169 | 3.3% 2.0% | Nov. 74,359 10,150 | 39 12 13.3% 6.4% | Dec. 74,816 9,655 | 39 14 20.7% 7.4% | Jan. 74,270 9,683 | 52 19 27.7% 10.1% | Feb. 71,271 9,299 | 52 19 27.7% 10.1% | Mar. 72,417 9,333 | 52 19 27.7% 10.1% | 1.2 ** Mar.EA * | 26 5 54.2% 10.4% | * This month, statistics are reported for the Extended Access lines at Mitel. ** The new software to determine the average number of busy signals was run for a 4-day period at the end of the month. Of 1,689 dials, the maximum during the period was 8 tries, with an average of 1.2. The median was 1. f) Sponsorship, Homepage Data and Information Providers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We added 1 new organizational account this month (Taoist Tai Chi Society), bringing our total to 18. We lost ground in the number of Information Providers by 1, to 321. The number of members with homepages increased to 1319 or 6.3 % of our members. New Total | New Total | IP Incr. | Member % Org. Org. | Line Line | New Total Free -Dec. | Home of Accts Accts | Spons Spons | IPs IPs Pages % | Page Memb ~~~~~ ~~~~~ | ~~~~~ ~~~~~ | ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~ | ~~~~~ ~~~~ Apr. | 1 1 | 2 | May. 4 4| 1 2 | 4 | Jun. 0 4| 1 3 | 2 | Jul. 1 5| 1 4 | 2 | Aug. 1 6| 0 4 | 2 | Sep. 2 8| 0 4 | 1 | Oct. 3 11| 0 4 | 1 | Nov. 3 14| 0 4 | +/-300 55 |1,224 5.7%* Dec. 0 14| 1 5 | 1 301 57 3.6% |1,205 5.7%* Jan. 1 15| 1 6 | 28 329 56 -1.8% |1,310 6.2% Feb. 2 17| 0 6 | -7 322 67 19.6% |1,316 6.3% g) Government Grants ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (i) Regional Municipality OF Ottawa-Carleton We have received written notice from RMOC, informing us that our request for funding has been turned down. The letter also stated that the Committee will send their reasons and comments in a separate letter, at a later time. (ii)Industry Canada Preliminary discussions continue, regarding a project funding proposal which will be presented to Industry Canada later this year. The project envisioned, will, if accepted, get funding from IC's Community Access program (CAP), which now will fund urban CAP sites in addition to rural projects. h) Public Relations Update ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FreeNews - monthly is available in text format, at "go freenews" and on the web at: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/freenews/. Ads were run in both Monitor Magazine and Ottawa Computes. These ads again promoted graphical browsing and the 32 additional Extended Access Lines. The Events Coordination Team met on March 31'st to plan events including the Picnic, Birthday Party, and other social functions. Minutes have been posted to ncf.sub.public-relations. Noteworthy among the items discussed, is the joint fund-raising project to be undertaken between NCF and CfSC (Citizens for Safe Cycling). The event will be a bicycle rally to be held in September with three levels of participation including one for children. i) Funding Administrivia ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The on-line list of donor files was updated to reflect all March donations. Thank You letters were sent to all donors. 2. NCF Administration ====================== a) Top Five Priorities ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (1) Membership Development: Plan and execute membership drive. (2) Revenue Development: Continue team development, plan and execute funding project(s) (3) System stability & FreeNet Next Generation Project Hardware/software changes to be made to improve system stability. (4) Board: Revise Board manual (5) Projects: Pursue Industry Canada funding proposal b) Network Upgrades ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Changes to the binary file transfer control mechanism were introduced in the first half of the month, to provide a user-friendly denial message to members when they attempt to download a binary file which is disallowed. We went from an ACL (Access Control List) based system that was giving out an unfriendly denial message, or none at all, to a very flexible URL redirector/rewriter system that allows us to give messages to users which we can develop and modify. The same system is ready to go at Mitel, but we are still waiting for iStar/PSInet to clear-up the reverse DNS delegation. (Without proper rDNS, proxy performance would be very slow). On March 17th, we upgraded our link to Carleton's Backbone: we moved from an Ethernet (10Mbps) to a FastEthernet (100Mbps). On March 25th, we performed a major upgrade. Freenet1 got a new CPU module installed - twin hyperSparc 90MHz (this is the CPU donated by Hardware Canada Computing), to replace the twin SuperSparc 50MHz. During the same downtime, we changed the Operating System on Freenet1 to Solaris 2.6 (in place of SunOS 4.1.3_U1). A new FastEthernet card was installed in FreeNet1 with interface connected to a 100Mbps port of our switch. These changes forced us to complete a major review of all applications running on the machine prior to the update, but the dramatic performance increase resulting from these changes far outweighs the investment in time, inconvenience and effort. The following two graphs, which Ian Allen prepared, illustrate the stunning improvement that these changes have produced: The Week Before: % upgraph.pl -m f1 -t 98/03/19-98/03/20 -r 22 l5 Load-5 Load-5 day=0123456 mach=1 98/03/19-98/03/20 30 ++----+----+-----+----+-----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + | | 25 ++ * ++ | * | | ** * * | 20 ++* * * ** * * * ++ | * * * ** * * ** ** * | |* * * *** * * ** * * ** * ** * * | 15 ** ** * * * * ** * ** * * ** * **** ++ |* * * * * *** * *** * ** ** * ** * * | | * ** * * * * ** * *** *** ** **** 10 ++ * * * * * * * ** ++ | * * * * | | * * * | 5 ++ * * * * ++ | * ** * | + + +** **+ + + + + + + + + + 0 ++----+----+-----+----+-----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----++ 0h 2h 4h 6h 8h 10h 12h 14h 16h 18h 20h 22h 24h Now: % upgraph.pl -m f1 -t 98/03/27-98/03/28 -r 22 l5 Load-5 Load-5 day=0123456 mach=1 98/03/27-98/03/28 2.5 ++----+----+-----+----+-----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----++ + + + + + + + + + + + + + | * | | * | 2 ++ * ++ | * | | * | 1.5 ++ * ** ++ | ** * * | | ** ** * | | ** ** ** * | 1 ++ * * * * * +* | * ** * * * * * ***** * * |* * ** * * * ** * * * * ** *| 0.5 *+* * * * * * ******* ***** ** *** *++ | * *** * *** * * * * | | * * * | + + +*****+ + + + + + + + + + 0 ++----+----+-----+----+-----+-----+----+-----+----+-----+----+----++ 0h 2h 4h 6h 8h 10h 12h 14h 16h 18h 20h 22h 24h c) FreeNet Next Generation Project ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The upgrade described above, paves the way for FreeNet NG. The next major step will be a similar cleanup of FreeNet4 and some relocation of files and processes. Included in this latter category is an analysis of our Webserver, and its possible relocation to FreeNet1. We plan to upgrade this server from Netscape Enterprise 2 to Netscape Enterprise 3.0 3. Member Services and Future Initiatives ========================================== a) Member-Get-A-Member Campaign May 8th, 1998 to July 5th, 1998 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Three sponsors have been secured for this campaign: Myers Chev Olds Cadillac, will donate space in their print ads in the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Sun, running daily from May 2nd until May 6th. In addition, Myers will dedicate daily 10-second radio spots (CFRA morning drive-in) throughout the two month campaign. Additionally, Myers will donate a weekend's free rental of a Cadillac and some supplies, Xeroxing and equipment, telephone connections etc, for the Launch at their annual Clearance Event at the Nepean Sportsplex. Myers will also prepare some colour posters for use in their showrooms and some for us. The Clones Society Inc. will donate our grand prize, a Pentium Computer. KAO Infosystems will donate 2,000 diskettes and 100 CD-ROMs and the recording and labeling of same, for our Auto-install software. The Campaign will be launched at the Myers Clearance Event at the Sportsplex, where we will have a volunteer-manned registration and information table. The theme of the campaign is to promote Members helping Members for registration and learning how to use the NCF system. Throughout the event, all new members and the members who help them, will be entered in a contest. The process will require the new member to use the main NCF services in a treasure hunt-like series of steps to validate both their entry and their mentor's entry. Members will be encouraged to enter as many times as they wish, but with one entry for each new member helped and with the proviso that they accept the responsibility for helping the newbie learn the ropes. The system-generated welcome letter will be modified, so that each new member will receive a reminder of who their mentor is, and how to e-mail them for help. The system will also mail the mentor-member to remind them of their obligation to help the new member and identifying the new member's new userid. The goal of the campaign will be to sign up 5,000 new members in the two month period. The cashometer (now renamed the Memb-O-Meter) will be added to the login screen to give members an indication of progress. A similar, but coloured graphical indicator will be added to the homepage. b) Scriptless PPP ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Terminal Server interface was changed on the NCF Express (520-7835 modem pool), the NCF FreeWeb (520-9013 modem pool) and the Extended Access (Mitel lines at 271-9768) This was done to greatly simplify the process of connecting to FreeNet using Point to Point (PPP) protocol. We plan to make a similar change to the main modem pool lines (520-1135) on April 20, 1997. Because of the major impact of this change, and to warn members accessing in text mode that they will now have to press "enter" when they first get connected, a short note will be sent out to all members. Additionally, information will be posted to ncf.announce and ncf.general, whith appropriate changes made to online documentation. c) Progress with Auto-install Diskettes for PPP Connectivity ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Auto-install Software is complete. KAO Infosystems will begin the duplication process on Tuesday, April 20, 1997 with planned completion by the 5th of May, in time for our Member-Get-A-Member launch. 80 of the 100 CD-ROMs will be distributed to area libraries, so that members will be able to borrow them to install software or configure their systems. The remaining 20 will be used for volunteers and NCF Office lending. The diskettes will be provided (lent) to members who donate. d) NCF Website ~~~~~~~~~~~ The NCF's Web Team, has been working very hard indeed, to produce, what may be one of the best looking and most functional freenet Homepages on the Web. Our NEW look combines esthetics and ease of use. Special thanks go to Pat Drummond, (ad995), and her team of experts (go "webteam"). Their efforts and talents have resulted in a Homepage we can all be proud of. Check it out at: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca e) Web Chat ~~~~~~~~ This project is continuing although a little behind our anticipated schedule. Some of the key volunteers needed to bring this project to completion, have been focussed recently on other pressing NCF events and projects. -- *** Christopher L. Cope, Executive Director *** National Capital Freenet / Libertel de la Capitale nationale tel. (613) 520-2600 ext. 8024 -or- fax (613) 520-3524