Executive Director's Report March, 1999 =========================== April 18, 1999 By Christopher L. Cope (execdir@freenet.carleton.ca) Contents: 1. Administration & Funding 2. Member Services and Future Initiatives 3. System Administration 1. Administration & Funding =========================== a) Donation Data - New Registrations ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The number of new members for March includes 200 accounts set up for the VolNet recipients. Without this batch of accounts, we would have reported only 213 new members or 29% less than budget. Similarly, the average donation at $7.26 when adjusted to reflect only the true new registrations would have resulted in an average donation of $14.08 over all new accounts. Industry Canada will pay (part of VolNet contract) $24,990 for these accounts or $124.95 each. Because the average individual donation was quite high this month at $ 26.32, total registration donations for the month were under budget by only 4% at $2,875. At the end of the first quarter, we stand at $8,876.00 registration revenue; under budget by $124 or -1%. No. No. % Of Avg. Regist New Budget Regist Memb $ Budget Regist Donat'n Memb. (No.) Var Donate Donate Amount ($) Var Donat'n All New ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ YTD'98 3,488 7,224 -52% 1,499 43.0% $35,668 $46,225 -23% $23.79 $10.23 Avg'98 291 602 -52% 125 43.0% $ 2,972 $ 3,852 -23% $23.79 $10.23 Jan. 205 300 -32% 133 64.9% $ 3,297 $ 3,000 -10% $24.79 $16.08 Feb 230 300 -23% 127 55.2% $ 2,704 $ 3,000 -10% $23.62 $13.04 Mar. 413 300 38% 114 27.6% $ 2,875 $ 3,000 -4% $26.32 $ 7.26 Apr. 300 $ 3,000 May 300 $ 3,000 Jun. 300 $ 3,000 Jul. 400 $ 4,000 Aug. 400 $ 4,000 Sep. 400 $ 4,000 Oct. 400 $ 4,000 Nov. 400 $ 4,000 Dec. 400 $ 4,000 ~~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ YTD'99 848 900 -6% 374 44.1% $ 8,876 $ 9,000 -1% $23.73 $10.47 Avg'99 283 300 -6% 125 44.1% $ 2,959 $ 3,000 -1% $23.73 $10.47 b) Donation Data - Renewals ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The number of renewals this month nearly matches the forecast at 1,151 or -1%. The percentage of members giving a donation with their renewal however, has dropped dramatically to 71.1%. Fortunately, the average renewal donation of $28.63 is higher than the requested $24.00 minimum, so the final figure of $23,422 is only under budget by 1%. At the end of the first quarter, we stand at $22,527 renewal revenue; under budget by $1,006 or -4%. No. % Of Avg. Renwl No. Budget Renwl Renwl $ Budget Renwl Donate Renwl (No.) Var Donate Donate Amount ($) Var Donatn All Ren ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ YTD'98 9,697 10,012 -3% 6,465 66.7% $156,819 $228,388 -31% $24.26 $16.17 AVG'98 808 834 -3% 539 66.7% $ 13,068 $ 19,032 -31% $24.26 $16.17 Jan. 906 1,020 3% 880 97.1% $ 20,844 $ 20,800 0% $23.69 $23.01 Feb. 826 1,279 -35% 781 94.6% $ 23,316 $ 26,100 -11% $29.85 $28.23 Mar. 1,151 1,162 -1% 818 71.1% $ 23,422 $ 23,700 -1% $28.63 $20.35 Apr. 1,235 $ 25,200 May 1,176 $ 24,000 Jun. 873 $ 17,800 Jul. 510 $ 10,400 Aug. 358 $ 7,300 Sep. 270 $ 5,500 Oct. 309 $ 6,300 Nov. 314 $ 6,400 Dec. 387 $ 7,900 ~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ YTD'98 2,883 3,461 -17% 2,479 86% $ 67,582 $ 70,600 -4% $27.26 $39.02 AVG'98 961 1,154 -17% 826 86% $ 22,527 $ 23,533 -4% $27.26 $26.01 c) Unassigned Donations ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Donations not associated with registration or renewals continue to come in: Period Donors Donation ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ Total 1998 1,103 $34,033 (avg. $30.85) Jan. 1999 41 $ 1,268 (avg. $30.93) Feb. 1999 33 $ 1,057 (avg. $32.03) Mar. 1999 07 $ 186 (avg. $26.57) ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ Total 1999 74 $ 2,511 (avg. $31.00) d) Membership Activity: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It was discovered that the archival/renewal software was not correctly removing archived accounts from the system password file for some time. Previous monthly reports used data drawn from this password file to report on the number of members. The figure of 14,517 is manually extracted from the main database and reflects the true amount. The monthly figures for February and January have been restated based on renewal/archiving/registrations in each month. The large drop in February marks the reactivation of archiving, but these accounts would have been archived anyway, sometime over the period July 1998 through February, 1999. Again, the increase in the month is partially created by the 200 accounts created for the VolNet recipients. Without these, we would stand at 14,317 members, for an increase of 6.4% since last month. |Member | Current |To line| Actual |Ratio |Number Forecast Number Forecast Number Number # of % inc. | |Of New No. of Members No. of Members Members Members -dec. |Lns :1 |Members New Memb Renewed Renewed Un-arch Archvd ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~ |~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~ Jan. 16,691* -1.5% |213 76| 205 300 906 1,020 0 0 Feb. 13,461* 4.7% |213 80| 230 300 826 1,279 1 4,739 Mar. 14,517* 7.8% |213 80| 213 300 1,151 1,162 4 252 f) Modem Usage Data ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We are now able to determine the number of sessions and the number of unique users accessing our main modem pool and the Extended Access pool. The following chart illustrates not only how many members are accessing the modems, but provides a distinction between PPP and text usage. It is interesting to note that PPP users account for 55% of the number of sessions in one week, but represent only 45% of the number of users. Unfortunately, we do not have historical information split out in this way, but as the chart grows, we be better able to study trends. (i) Weekly Sessions PPP Users PPP Users Text Users Total Increase Main Pool Mitel Pool Total PPP (Main Pool) Sessions Decrease ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ Jan 7,656 14% 52,953 Feb 7,068 17% 42,381 -20% Mar 29,635 44% 8,125 12% 37,769 55% 30,320 45% 68,080 61% (ii) Unique users in a one week period PPP Users PPP Users Text Users Total Increase Main Pool Mitel Pool Total PPP (Main Pool) Sessions Decrease ~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~ Jan 1,178 16% 7,187 Feb 1,127 17% 6,508 -9% Mar 2,510 30% 1,095 13% 3,605 43% 4,711 57% 8,316 28% f) Modem Availability ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The modem monitoring software was run from 4:17pm on Wednesday, March 24 to 12:34pm on Monday, March 29th. During the period, the software made a total of 5483 attempts. Jim Elder has modified the software to provide statistics on connection failures. The percentage shown at the right of each column, represents the total number of attempts which failed to connect for any reason, including, no dial tone (outgoing), no answer, no login prompt etc. Each row in the table below summarizes samples taken during the indicated hour for each modem. The first number in each column represents the number of samples in that hour. The second number in each column represents the percentage of those samples that resulted in a successful connection. The higher the percentage, the better the result. The software does not attempt to connect from 2:00am until 7:00am. Modem Availability ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 271-9768 520-1135 520-9013 Hr:Min Samp Aval Fail Samp Aval Fail Samp Aval Fail ~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 00:00 100 31% 69% 100 83% 17% 100 55% 28% 01:00 100 34% 66% 100 97% 3% 100 83% 14% 02:00 4 25% 75% 1 100% 0% 0 0% 0% 07:00 100 38% 62% 100 93% 7% 100 96% 4% 08:00 100 42% 57% 100 89% 11% 100 72% 28% 09:00 100 45% 55% 100 85% 15% 100 72% 22% 10:00 100 44% 56% 100 87% 10% 100 77% 15% 11:00 100 31% 68% 100 91% 9% 100 79% 17% 12:00 92 28% 69% 92 90% 9% 91 79% 20% 13:00 80 28% 70% 80 83% 16% 80 65% 32% 14:00 80 30% 70% 80 86% 13% 80 72% 26% 15:00 80 20% 73% 80 82% 17% 80 66% 30% 16:00 95 12% 49% 94 68% 20% 94 46% 28% 17:00 100 24% 45% 100 69% 26% 100 69% 20% 18:00 100 10% 82% 100 68% 27% 100 52% 24% 19:00 100 15% 80% 100 53% 29% 100 40% 24% 20:00 100 8% 84% 100 55% 24% 100 50% 26% 21:00 100 13% 83% 100 40% 26% 100 29% 33% 22:00 100 6% 80% 100 43% 32% 100 29% 29% 23:00 100 15% 84% 100 70% 26% 100 47% 35% ~~~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ Avg. 76 21% 57% 76 64% 14% 76 49% 19% 2. Member Services and Future Initiatives ========================================== a) Projects ~~~~~~~~ (i) Industry Canada - Urban CAP Roll Out Strategy We delivered our final report entitled "Urban Community Access Program Roll Out Strategy" to Industry Canada on March 31, 1999. The report was well received by the Industry Canada Urban CAP project team and we have heard since that the document has been circulated to other Industry Canada staff. We expect to be asked to present the paper to Industry Canada regional managers before the end of April. Team members are Jeff Bossert (au025), Jean Wilmot (aa145) and myself (bz787). (ii) Industry Canada - Urban CAP Ottawa steering committee Preliminary discussions have been held with senior representatives of several local organizations, with a view to having a tentative slate of "champions" for an Urban CAP steering committee in the National Capital region. Industry Canada has made it clear that such committees should include as a minimum, a representative of the local library, the municipal government, HRDC and a community network (where one exists). In our region, the committee will likely include municipal government representatives from Ottawa, Nepean and Gloucester, a representative from OPL and Nepean Library, representatives from HRDC and Health Canada and a representative from both NCF and OCRI. Because Urban CAP is a program to provide public Internet access, where NCF's experience is extensive, consideration is being given to having NCF act as coordinating partner, at least through the development phase, where Industry Canada is expected to provide 100% funding for development of a city-wide plan. While funding for CAP was provided in the 1998 budget, the Urban CAP component has not yet been formally announced. Until it is, our participation and the role which we could play must be seen as tentative. (iii) Industry Canada - VolNet The following organizations have been named as Delivery agents for Industry Canada's VolNet program: - The Volunteer Centre of Ottawa Carleton / National Capital FreeNet - Vancouver Community Net - The Support Network (Edmonton) - La Table des regroupements provinciaux des organisimes communautaires (Montreal - CAM- Internet (Montreal) - Community Services Council (Newfoundland) - United Way (Regina) - Web Networks (Toronto) - La Federation de la jeunesse canadienne-francaise (Francophones outside Quebec) We commenced work on the "Assessment Phase" for the Ottawa region on April 1, 1999 and expect to complete the assessment by May 31, 1999. Lyn Shouldice, (LynS@freenet.carleton.ca) has been hired as project coordinator. Lyn can be reached at the Volunteer Centre of Ottawa-Carleton at 722-9823 ext. 222. Some 2,000 letters will be distributed, some by mail and some through other cooperating agencies during the week of April 19, 1999 (National Volunteer Week). An information session will be held at United Way's office on Colonnade Road on Thursday April 29, 1999 with the English session scheduled for 7:00pm and a French session at 8:00pm. (iv) HRDC (Office of Learning Technology) We presented a proposal to The Office of Learning Technology, for development funding, for NCF to establish and operate a Thin Client Service on behalf of its membership. The initiative would provide NCF members with substantial opportunities for informal learning through access to a range of office automation software. Access to these software tools will provide job skills development opportunities to members, directly enhancing their employability. The establishment of such a service would also provide the opportunity to make a wide range of computer-based training modules available to the community. The "Developmental Phase Requirement" was proposed to permit the development of a detailed project proposal. This development phase will also permit the testing of the feasibility of the server configuration, in order to confirm the viability of some of the proposed service features, and permit the securing of all required partner contributions. Our proposal requests $24,500 funding for the Developmental Phase and we have learned that this has been approved by staff and has been sent "up" for Ministerial approval. We expect a confirmation and contract award within the next week or so. We have also learned that OLT may award development funding for two other projects where NCF has linkages: Telecommunities Canada and The Volunteer Centre of Ottawa Carleton. Representatives of OLT are particularly enthusiastic about the synergy which seems to be developing among Ottawa groups (v) HRDC Student Employment Program - CapitalFind This summer, we plan to accelerate development of this directory by employing 10 students (both secondary and post-secondary) to work exclusively on the project for a 10-week period, June 21st to August 27th, 1999. The student's duties will include researching and contacting existing businesses and organizations, and creation of web pages and sub directories using HTML. While the focus of the project is on creation of a service which promotes economic development in the region, the participation by students will also provide them with training and job skills related to high technology and general office procedures. We expect Human Resources Development Canada to fund wages and fringe benefits for these students, as part of their Summer Student Employment program, although this is a competitive process and we will only learn that our proposal is successful in May. Discussions are ongoing with Carleton University's Alumni Development group for our use of one of their rooms on campus, which they use (at other times) as a telemarketing room. The room is perfect for our needs with 10 telephones and 10 computer workstations. (vi) SSHRC Research Project Dr. Leslie Regan Shade, Assistant Professor, University of Ottawa, Department of Communication and Andrew Clement, Associate Professor, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto have submitted a proposal to the Social Sciences And Humanities Research Council Of Canada (http://www.sshrc.ca/) to carry out a research project provisionally entitled "Re-configuring public/private boundaries in the KBE/S: Public policy perspectives". The project would extend the work of the Information Policy Research Program (IPRP), at the University of (http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp). Graduate students at the two universities will perform much of the work as part of their dissertation research. The project will examine how pervasive re-intermediation processes associated with the growth of digital networking in a variety of settings open up significant policy issues associated with longstanding distinctions between `public' and `private'. Some of the main themes to be explored include: civil society, governance, identity, access, privacy, control, trust and performance/accountability. Among several key focus areas, the work will include an examination of the impact that the volunteers and voluntary organizations have contributed to the development of community networking, with a specific examination of Ottawa's National Capital FreeNet (NCF). The promotion and use of community networks as community learning networks (CLNs) will also be examined. According to the Office of Learning Technologies, CLNs are defined as community-based structures designed to support learning for their members. The support and promotion of CLNs raise specific public policy issues related to governance, access, trust, local and national vs. global sovereignty, and social cohesion. Tensions evolve over the shifting of public responsibilities from entrenched organizations and institutions (eg., government support services and programs) to new forms of public spaces (e.g., community networks) that are maintained by private interests (e.g. volunteers), yet with a collective public interest. In so far as NCF will benefit directly from the information derived from the study, I have offered our cooperation to Professors Shade and Clement. b) Public Relations Update ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The last issue of "The Informer", the quarterly newsletter of the Home Business Association contained an article which I authored entitled "How Far We Have Come, How Far We Have Yet to Go". The article can be read at: http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/execdir/HBA_article.html In an article entitled "FreeNet turns a stately six", Silicon Valley North reported on our sixth Birthday in their April edition in their "More Nuggets" section. The article can be read at: http://www.ncf.ca/ip/freenet/subs/public-relations/media/nuggets99 In an article entitled "Seniors welcome challenge of computers" Lindsey Parry reported on NCF's success with our seniors program in the April 9, issue of Centretown News. The article was a full page and featured a photograph of Jules Lafrance (ab388). This article can be read at: http://www.ncf.ca/ip/freenet/subs/public-relations/media/centretownnews99 c) Volunteer Coordination ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ April 19, 1999 marks the beginning of National Volunteer week. NCF will participate in this celebration by posting information and appreciation each day of the week. Our volunteer groups will be featured as follows: Monday: VOY's and 99 VOM's Tuesday: 95 VOM's Wednesday: 96 " Thursday: 97 " Friday: 98 " In addition, a profile of the work that the Board (all volunteers) will be posted, and a special write-up of the help desk, the web team and the Sysadmin team will be done. e) Top Five Priorities - ED ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (1) System reliability - Resolve issues relating to reliability - New terminal server at Carleton, hardware problems at Mitel - implement configuration of modem pools (2) Projects: - Extended Access II (RMOC) - Urban CAP - VolNet - Summer student employment on CapitalFind (3) Making NCF membership easy - remove impediments to membership, including a review of forms processing, telephone response, auto-install software, training and outreach. (4) Membership Building - Distribution of flyer and reproduction of accompanying auto-install software to computer stores. (5) Y2K Issues - monitor and facilitate progress. 3. System Administration ======================== a) Reliability Concerns ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The focus throughout the month of March, and extending into April has been to ferret out the cause of unexpected disconnects and connection failures, particularly those affecting our PPP users, which were reported more frequently. After several false starts and with some difficulty in determining configuration settings, we now have the new Annex 4000 terminal server installed and operating smoothly. The new NAS currently supports the twenty-five lines comprised of the two pools: the 520-7835 lines (former express pool) and the 520-9013 lines (former Web Sampler pool). Incoming calls to 520-9013 now forward to 520-7835 when busy. These two groups now form our high speed pool and at the moment are operating with our 10 original 28.8 Kbps Supra modems, 10 of our new Practical Peripheral 28.8 Kbps modems (donated by Magma) and 5 USR 14.4 Kbps modems. The graph at: http://gw.ncf.carleton.ca:8000/mrtg/modem/express.html (particularly the monthly snapshot, illustrates the difficulty we have been experiencing for several weeks, but happily the current trend which suggests that service has improved significantly. Similarly, we have provided a monitoring tool at: http://www-services.ncf.carleton.ca/bb/bb.html, where these 25 modems can be observed remotely. At the bottom of the page, is a small table with 4 rows of lights. The first row "Annex4_1-10" represents the original Supra modems, "Express1" and "Express2" are Practical Peripheral modems and ""Express3" are the remaining USR 14.4 units. A green light indicates that the modem is in use, a red light indicates that the modem is hung and a clear circle indicates that the modem is available. The new NAS allows us to automatically re-initialize each modem after each call and since completion early on April 16, none of these modems has required a manual reset. b) Extended Access - reliability concerns ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ We have determined that the erratic performance and unusual disconnects on our Mitel lines seems to be caused by a failing modem card(s) in our Mitel Cisco AS5100 terminal server. Our Cisco representative is attempting to locate replacement parts for us. c) Archiving ~~~~~~~~~ The archiving software, which was re-instated in February, is failing to remove passwords for archived users from the main password file. We are able to manually extract membership data etc. and, as no user services seem to be affected by this flaw, we have delayed searching for the cause until modem and terminal server problems are resolved. d) Bandwidth - Carleton's Pipe ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Carleton continues to struggle to configure their new 5-Megabit ATM switch and the level of saturation in their existing pair of T-1s continues unabated as can be seen graphically at: http://gw.ncf.carleton.ca:8000/mrtg/misc/ag.carleton.15.html. Some improvement is expected next week when Carleton expects to complete the connection to CANetII. Traffic (email mostly) to an from other locations on this network, such as Waterloo University etc. will be diverted through the new pipe, offloading traffic on the existing connection. The next stage will be divert the remaining traffic to the ONET backbone, on a subnet-by-subnet basis. As of Friday, April 16 however, Carleton couldn't predict the date for transferring the subnet carrying NCF traffic. In terms of future needs, we have been invited to participate in Carleton's IT Strategy planning process and I have sent the Directors a request for comment and input by separate email. e) New Equipment ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our new Horizon Ultrasparc Iii (donated by Hardware Canada has been connected to our backbone and configured as FreeNet8. Currently, Carleton has allowed us to physically locate the server on their workbench, while configuration and software installation continues. In an email dated March 25, Norman Lecouvie, Netscape's Regional manger was optimistic (finally) that Netscape would donate updated Web and mail server software. Lecouvie indicated that he would get back to us shortly. e) Y2K Progress ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Barry Alder (ak221) has installed Solaris on his personal machine and has installed FreePort on it to review and test the software for Y2K compliance. f) Top Five Priorities - Sysadmin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (1) Resolve connection problems on NCF-Carleton servers (2) Resolve connection problems on NCF-Mitel servers (3) Installation and configuration of new terminal server (4) Installation and configuration of new Ultrasparc Iii server (donated by Hardware Canada - install webserver (5) Continue Webmail project