As a list owner, I am passing this message. Lyle R. Riedinger, 700 South 9th Street Humboldt, Iowa 50548-2258 E-Mail lrr@trvnet.net URL:www.GeoCities.com/WallStreet/5933 Phone:<515>332-1439 -----Original Message----- From: Brian Leverich <leverich@rootsweb.com> To: archives-l@rootsweb.com <archives-l@rootsweb.com>; rootsweb-help@rootsweb.com <rootsweb-help@rootsweb.com>; listowners-announce@rootsweb.com <listowners-announce@rootsweb.com> Cc: GENCMP-L@rootsweb.com <GENCMP-L@rootsweb.com>; ROOTS-L@rootsweb.com <ROOTS-L@rootsweb.com>; Dr. Brian Leverich <leverich@rootsweb.com> Date: Sunday, January 04, 1998 11:48 PM Subject: Growing Pains ... > > >Maybe it's all those new computers Santa left our genealogical >brethren, but the load on RootsWeb's servers and Internet >connections has increased dramatically in the last week. > >This is causing some problems, but we will fix them as soon as >humanly possible. > >The most obvious problem is that the Web/FTP server is maxing the T1 >pipe it uses, which has forced us to limit the number of FTP >connections we accept during peak hours. Users wishing to access >the USGenWeb Archives should use the Search Engine server, which is >on our second T1 and still has available bandwidth. (I've installed >a pointer to the search engine on the "too many users" FTP message.) > >The second obvious problem is that the lists.rootsweb.com server is >being overloaded, and we're experiencing latencies that are beyond >the 1-10 minute level that we routinely provide. > >The third problem is that we've run out of disk space for use by >Marc Nozell's mailing HTML list archiver and the search engine >server that supports the mail archives and USGenWeb Archives. >(That is, we've filled up more than 17 gigabytes on those servers!) > >Here's what we're doing to bring RootsWeb back to the best possible >performance. > >First, we're acquiring more bandwidth. As a short-term solution, >we've been talking with the sysadmins at three sites with DS3 pipes >(a DS3 is equal to 30 T1s or about 1500 standard 28.8 modems) and we >will probably be colocating the Web server at one of their NOCs very >soon. As a long-term solution, we have Pacific Bell doing the >engineering studies on bringing a DS3 up here to RootsWeb's main NOC. > >Second, we're beefing up our servers. Tomorrow morning we'll be >ordering the memory to double lists.rootsweb.com's size up to 512 >MB, which should solve the mailing list latency problem. We're also >beginning to use RAID-5 disk arrays of the fastest available SCSI >drives in our servers, which should increase the speed of their I/O >subsystems by a factor of 6 to 8. The disk upgrades will give us >plenty of room for expanding support for mailing list archives and >the USGenWeb Archives. > >And we're upgrading virtually all our servers in other ways. > >The upshot is that we expect to be able to continue providing >unlimited, fast, and reliable support for the genealogical >community. There may be a few growing pains because we were >surprised by the size of the sudden after-Christmas growth in >demand, but we'll add capacity as fast as humanly possible. > >As always, I'd like to thank the Members, Sponsors, and Donors who >support RootsWeb. If it weren't for the continuing contributions >being made by our users, there is no chance that we could continue >to grow to meet the expanding needs of the genealogical community. > >Cheers, B. > > >-- >Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L >RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ >P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 leverich@rootsweb.com > Hi all - Hundreds of listowners and users have now given us input on the issues of whether listowners should be able to charge money or request personal information as a prerequisite for participating in a list, and Karen and I are now convinced that extreme behavior by some listowners could affect the whole listowner and user community by discouraging users from participating in any of our lists. Hence we'd like to formally announce policy that: RootsWeb Lists Are Free! Users should be able to subscribe to lists without being required to pay money and without being required to provide personal information. While we are willing to let bygones be bygones, future violations may result in a listowner being asked to relocate their lists to another server. IMPORTANT NOTES The foregoing policy does not apply to the few lists, for example the HCPD-L list for the Hacker's Creek Pioneer Descendants organization, that exist specifically for the members of an established organization. Explicit permission must be obtained from Karen or Brian for lists that want to operate in this paying- members-only fashion. The foregoing policy does not prevent listowners from being able to ask list subscribers to voluntarily provide contact information and such. The point is that subscribers may not be *required* to provide that information: explain why you need the information and that providing the information is VOLUNTARY, then be tolerant of the folks who choose not to provide it. The foregoing policy does not prevent listowners or subscribers from soliciting voluntary contributions for family associations or other causes, so long as the purpose of the fund-raising is specified and the subscribers are told that participation is completely voluntary. With regards to purpose of the fund-raising, listowners must *never* give the impression they are fund-raising for RootsWeb or for the physical support of the list unless the funds are intended for RootsWeb. A PLEA FOR SENSIBILITY Please do not ask me or Karen to provide a detailed exegesis of this policy: just use your common sense and, if a particular situation seems unclear, bring it to the "listowners" list and ask our peers for their thoughts. Let's keep our subscribers happy and participation in our lists growing. Cheers, B. -- Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 leverich@rootsweb.com