NEWS:    More Modems Added For Springfield and West Plains.

Twenty-three modems were added to the Springfield off-campus pool, twenty-four modems were added to the Springfield pool, and six discrete modems were removed and replaced by twenty-three modems making up the West Plains pool.

All users of these facilities should see less contention and, therefore, receive less "all circuits are busy now" audible messages.

February 9, 1999

SWBT has corrected their error of deleting two trunks from our modem pool.  These two trunks along with the originally requested trunk have been added properly to the 417-875-6996 modem pool.  The pool actually has all 230 lines operational for the first time last night.  Unfortunately, the pool is still filling up and users will still get the "We're sorry all circuits are busy now.  Please hang up and try your call again later" message.  Communication Services and Networking are investigating the possibilities of enhancing the modem pool yet again.

The maximum connection time will be reduced from 5 hours to 4 hours.  Any connections exceeding this time limit for a single dial-in session will be dropped by the servers.  This will hopefully allow other users a chance at the lines until a solution can be found.

February 8, 1999

Not only has SWBT failed to add the new trunk of 23 modems into the 875-6996 pool, but they removed two trunks of 46 modems instead.  We are complaining profusely to SWBT and they assure us that the problems will be fixed soon.  Please accept our apologies for the problems, but all we can do is hound SWBT and refuse to pay for services we did not receive.

February 5, 1999

Due to internal delays with SWBT, the additional 23 modems off-campus modems promised below are not yet in production.  It is important to remember that SWBT will deliver a message stating that "All circuits are busy now" rather than delivering an actual busy signal for most service areas.  If you receive this message, all modems are actually busy.

February 1, 1999

Networking has performed several modem pool upgrades and some upgrades are still pending:

The AS5200 communication server "Mark" was used to support the Springfield on-campus and some of the off-campus users.  It now resides in West Plains and supports all dial-up users with it's single ISDN PRI digital service from a Northern Telecom DMS-100 telephone switch owned by GTE.

AS5200 server "Jim" was removed from the off-campus pool and now exclusively services on-campus users.  It does so through two DS1 digital circuits from Missouri State University's G2.2 Difinity PBX.  When users dial a "9" then the dial-up number, the PBX reroutes the call down these private DS1 circuits.  This has two advantages:  1) users don't tie up an off-campus DOD trunk by going off campus only to come back onto campus.  In other words, it's more efficient.  And, 2) because it's more efficient, users of this pool can actually connect at 50K+ data rates instead of only 28.8K

A new Cisco AS5300 communication server, "Tim", with 96 modems was installed which replaced "Jim" and half of "Mark" for off-campus use.  This left 23 unused modems which were connected to a new PRI from Southwestern Bell from a Lucent 5ESS telephone switch.  SWBT should integrate this new PRI into our dial-up group today or tomorrow (February 1st or 2nd, 1999).

"Tim" users a different modem type than the other communication servers and, therefore, users could experience different connect rates when serviced by different communication servers.  While most users connect at the same rate as before, a very few people are reporting differences connecting to the AS5300 verses one of the AS5200s.   Some report better speeds on "Tim" while others report worse.   Networking and Cisco Systems, Inc. are investigating these situations.