TurboNet Upgrades -

June, 2002, another upgrade

Upgrade update:

In April of 2002, we bought our fourth Max TNT. This one is high density, with a T-3 card and a capacity of 672 modems. It's the bottom one in the stack. (Sadly, the red racing stripe on this one was broken.) We intend to keep at least one of the other TNT's in the rack as a backup. Even though these are telco-quality servers, we believe in both belt and suspenders.

We also have a Redback SMS-1800 designed to handle 8000 broadband users. That's the lower black and silver unit to the right of the stack of TNT's. There is also a spare Redback box. Again, it's telco-quality equipment, but we believe in backups.

This month, Verizon is installing a second OC-3 in our Internet closet. We currently have three T-3 lines (one to the Internet and two to ADSL and Frame-Relay customers) and 14 separate T-1's for dial-up. Verizon wants to consolidate the T-1's and the two ADSL/Frame T-3's onto an OC-3 for efficiency and to place the Internet connection on the second OC-3. We're ready!

Above the TNT stack, you can see two rack-mounted servers. We've run out of room in the server rack behind Monica's and Tony's desks (picture below). And besides, all of those cooling fans making noise interfere with talking on the telephone. And conversation. We will be moving this server rack into the Internet closet after Verizon does the OC-3 upgrade.

When Verizon moves our dial-ups to the new OC-3, they will also be changing them to PRI lines. This will give TurboNet the capability to serve ISDN customers. We are hoping that the more efficient signaling will also let our regular dial-up customers connect faster. Not necessarily at a faster speed, but with less initial lag. We'll see.

Additional Services:

Since the last update, we have added ADSL and some wireless high-speed Internet service. That has been the impetus for the additional bandwidth which led to the new OC-3. Dial-up customers only use about one tenth of our available bandwidth to the Internet. The rest is used by high-speed customers and web services.

We have added an application server to our offering. Tony has written a web site engine for real estate brokerages. Description at www.US-Realty.com. It looks like a traditional web site to the end-user, but the engine makes adding new listings a snap. It automatically re-sizes and optimizes the photos, creates a slide show if there is more than one photo, and makes thumbnails for the index pages. It keeps the index pages up to date without tedious fiddling on the part of the brokerage. Tony is currently, as I write, modifying the program to allow it to be used for other high-ticket, one-of-a-kind items. Used cars, yachts, hot-blooded horses, tractors, antiques..... We'll see.

We are now a domain registrar, affiliated with Tucows.com. We can register your .com or .net or .org domain for $19.95 for one year or $35.00 for two years.

Another new service is server hosting. With one-unit servers, our Internet closet can accommodate many dedicated servers for individual organizations. If you need more than about eight web sites, it makes sense to have your own server. $250 per month for moderate bandwidth uses.