Chebucto Community Net

1996 Annual General Meeting

Technical Committee Report


The Technical Committee is a very active group that meets weekly and corresponds extensively on-line. There are 20-30 participants on this committee. The work of the committee can be divided into two categories: operations and development.

Operations

The past year has brought dramatic growth in many aspects of Chebucto, all of which have implications for the technical infrastructure. The number of active users has grown from 4,681 at the beginning of last year to 5,400 at the beginning of this year. Accesses to our site grew from 2.5 million in February of 1996 to 3.8 million in the same month this year. To the end of 1996 we had introduced 12,300 people to the Internet. On a daily basis, about 5,400 sessions take place.

The main computer that serves CCN users has been upgraded with an additional 64 Megabytes of memory and 2 Gigabytes of disk space. Unfortunately, we have not added any modems in the past year.

Within the next two months we hope to upgrade the power of the system substantially and to add at least 16 modems, subject to financial considerations.

Development

During the past year we made the transition to a new Internet Service Provider. In contrast to the previous such transition, this one was smooth. We now enjoy a high quality of service at an affordable price in what we believe is a stable arrangement.

We completed a business plan for the development of "Chebucto Suite", the software that runs CCN and which we distribute to other communities. That development is now being funded by Industry Canada and we are close to releasing Version 1.0 on CD. The improvements to CSuite that result from the development work are just gradually migrating back onto CCN so as not to cause any disruption. Members will notice some improvements over the coming weeks. We are most proud to have ann ounced (April 22, 1997) the unveiling of the French version of CCN -- Réseau Communautaire Chebucto (RCC).