Commonly Asked Questions on General/Miscellaneous Issues

-------------------------------------------------------------

> I have had some old experience (about in '93 or so) with Detroit FreeNet
> and found it inaccessible (always busy) and slow.  Since 7 years is
> about a millenium or two in computer time, I assume things are much
> better now.

Hi there. We're completely unrelated to the "old" Detroit FreeNet, or any
other FreeNet before 1997. The ServInt FreeNet (and D.C. FreeNet, Detroit
FreeNet, and all of our other FreeNets) were begun in late 1997. They are
all a part of ServInt Internet Services, a national backbone provider. Our
employees volunteer their time to maintain the FreeNet program and provide
support/training, and we offer free hosting/e-mail to nonprofit, community
and arts organizations.


> What kinds of servers do you use? in Colorado?  What's your track record
> in terms of gridlock and slow access times for web pages?

We do our hosting on BSD/OS and FreeBSD servers located in our McLean, VA
webhosting data center. In terms of access time/speed/etc., we ranked in
the top five of the last Boardwatch Magazine/Keynote Systems Weighted
Means download time rankings. So I think we're pretty good. ;)

-------------------------------------------------------------

> We already have a domain name.  How do we
> transfer this to reflect our presence at your site?

This depends on your current Internet access setup. If you have a LAN
connection using your domain name (e.g, if you use a departmental mail
server or have other services currently running through your domain name),
it will be easiest to contact your ISP and have them change your Name
Service WWW record to reflect the IP address of the FreeNet server. Once
your ISP makes this change, this can take effect within 2-24 hours.

If you aren't currently using the domain name for anything other than a
website, we will contact the InterNIC and transfer your domain to our name
service. This process generally takes 2-3 business days.


-------------------------------------------------------------

> What are your downtime statistics for the past 12 months?

Our McLean data center experienced several power-related downtime issues
(1-3 hours) over the past year, before our current battery-generator
system was in place; since then, this has not been an issue. Excepting
periodic network maintenance, our network uptime overall is well above 99
percent. The average uptime for the FreeNet server over the past year has
been approximately 90 days.

-------------------------------------------------------------

> What does your internet access equipment consist of?

ServInt (of which the ServInt FreeNet is a program) is a national backbone
provider, and our equipment and network specifications can be found on the
ServInt website (http://www.servint.net). As for the current FreeNet
server, it is a Pentium II/200 webserver with 256 MB RAM and 6 GB UW SCSI
drive, running BSD/OS 4. Our second server will be a Pentium III/300 with
similar RAM and drive specs, running FreeBSD 3.3. These servers are
connected via 10 BaseT Ethernet connections to a Bay switch, which then
connects via 100 BaseT Ethernet to our McLean data center's core Cisco
Catalyst 5500 switch.

-------------------------------------------------------------

ServInt FreeNet Terms & Conditions * The ServInt FreeNet's Privacy Policy