What You Memberships Pay For

Modems and Phone Lines

Modems and phone lines are the arteries of the community net. Every modem at the Chebucto site requires its own phone line with a combined cost per line of $60 per month. A shortage of phone lines severely limits growth and makes it difficult for you and also for our volunteers and information providers to do their work. A shortage of phone lines results in frequent busy signals making it very difficult for all users.

Office Support

A modestly paid office worker talks new users through the trials of setting up their computer for use with a modem. You may remember him. He's also the one who resets passwords, updates and activates accounts, processes information provider applications and redirects mail to the appropriate people. Without him, it would take days longer to process your accounts and those facing the steepest learning curve would have very little help surmounting it.

Other Equipment

Chebucto relies on:

a Sun Sparc 20. This is the brain that runs mail and all the other programs you use on Chebucto.
multiple large hard drives. These keep your files and mail messages safe.
terminal servers. These collect traffic passing into Chebucto over the modems and pass it to the Sparc.
routers. These are the traffic cops that direct and filter the "traffic" streaming among the Sparc, the public access terminals and the rest of the internet
digital links. We are connected to our internet service provider with digital phone line, costing over $1,000 per month.

Our computer equipment requires maintenance, reconfiguration and upgrades.