August 28, 1996
Index
David Trueman presented a report that covered many fronts.
TeleCommunities Canada
TeleCommunities Canada
96 was held in
Edmonton, with 3 representatives from CCN attending. David
Trueman presented 2 talks, using a browser over the net as his visual
display. The technical talk centered on the CSuite
Tour (more below) and the scripts which implement much of Chebucto Suite's functionality.
Those attending appeared very impressed with the depth of capability
provided by the system.
A second talk on the non-technical aspects of the system focussed on the
way that Chebucto Suite has been implemented to enhance the operations of a
community network. A brochure about the Chebucto Suite
was made available for attendees.
CCN will host TeleCommunities
Canada 97: August 15-19, 1997.
Development
Work is continuing on clearing the path for the CSuite Development Funding
Proposal, meeting each obstacle as it arises.
We need to firm up our plans for modularizing CSuite, as well as for
dividing the work in such a way that it can be handled in reasonable sized
contracts. The plan would allow for individuals or groups within the
CCN-tech team as well as from other sites to be able to participate.
Local
Negotiations on a new ISP contract are proceeding.
The Nova Scotia government is proposing a province-wide network, IWAN, to
be operated by private telecommunications firms. CCN is hoping that may
provide a means to provide interconnection for many community networks.
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Andrew Dacey
presented the
new CSuite Tour pages
which he and Landon Boyd have
been building
the last couple of weeks. The tours provide the prospective operator of
CSuite or user of a CSuite site a chance to view the system's many facets,
and even provide an annotated view of the live registration procedure, for
those with frame-enabled browsers. The system automatically recognizes
this capability, and provides a less interactive, but still very useful
tour for less capable browsers, including Lynx.
Please browse the tour,
and give Andrew and Landon some feedback. Help in filling out the
remaining sections would also be welcome.
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We would like to get some of Windsor's technical people involved in
CSuite, and are trying to arrange that they may meet with us regularly in
our Wednesday workshops.
A meeting in the near future to concentrate on the VCN functionality is
planned.
Ideas on economical ways of providing dialup connectivity for Windsor are
needed, as the original plan of a 56K frame relay connection seems to be
priced out of their current practical reach.
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CCN's board has suggested that the various teams appoint one of their
members to act as a volunteer contact and provide specific orientation to
the group's activities. Many of the team leaders handle this function
now, but some need to hand off this activity to spread the responsibility
and focus on their mandate.
There are a number of documents on-line at this point which provide a
significant record of the CCN technical Committee's activities:
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In order to streamline the activities of the postmasters, Sean Garagan and Ed Dyer will work together to
create a new Postmaster's Utility Page. Tools such as
- finger,
- host,
- traceroute,
- expand_alias,
- view_quota,
- view system mail log,
- verify/reset mailforward, and
- verify/reset mailfiltering
would be included in a forms based interface that would allow the
postmaster(s) to access these functions appropriately, with a minimum of
compromise to system security, and with identity validation.
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Tony
Cianfaglione reported two concerns from userhelp.
There appears to have been a spate of mail spams, junk mail, and abusive
mail arriving in CCN users' mailboxes recently. Various solutions were
discussed, and it was agreed that we work on a mail filter system, in
order to reduce the workload of the userhelp team and the postmasters. A
user interface based on a form and secure script will be used to set up
the filter parameters.
Another aid will be the preparation of a faq page on junk-mail for the
help desk.
Complaints were made about failed transfer of files over a telnet
connection from a freenet. It was suggested that most telnet connections
do not support binary file transfer, at least not without special
configuration. We support ftp connections for that purpose.
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This Page prepared by Ed Dyer
Workshop Coordinator David J. Murdoch