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Newsletter: May 1999 o Welcome o Important Note: Our Voice Number is 9214 2222 o Our New Shop o New Internet Legislation o iiNet Games - Online Multiplayer Gaming o A Note from Accounts o More Dialup Capacity o New Local Call Coverage o New Web Affiliate Account o iiNet's Guide to Cyberspace o Salsa, our new web server o In Closing Welcome This is our first newsletter for this year, and we've got some great news to share with you. We've opened a new shop at Karrinyup, we've expanded our coverage in WA, and we're busy working towards expanding our products to offer you more value for money. Important Note: Our Voice Number is 9214 2222 A number of months ago, our phone number (for all calls, including sales and support) changed to (08) 9214 2222. It is important that you call this number. We had to change our number in order to meet demand on our helpdesk. Unfortunately the technology on our old number had reached its limit, so we made the upgrade to an advanced new telephone system which meant a new number to call. Even though our old number will divert to our new number for the time being - there are only a limited number of calls it can transfer at one time. This means by calling the old number many of our clients are receiving an engaged tone, when in fact our staff are ready to accept your calls. So to repeat, our new telephone number for (voice) enquiries is
Our Fax number has also changed to 9214 2211. Our dialin numbers for your modem remain unchanged. Our New Shop We're continually evaluating how we can better service our clients. Some of the comments we've received are "It's difficult to come into the city to pay my bill" and "Can you sell software and hardware for my Internet connection?" In answer to these, we're pleased to announce the opening of the iiNet Shop. The shop is located at Karrinyup Shopping Centre and allows you to come in, sign up or renew accounts, and buy products for your Internet access. If you live in the northern suburbs, come down to renew your account and we will give you a Dome coffee voucher for free. New accounts at the store will also get a mug (quarterly Explorer account) or a hat (annual Explorer account). Some of the products available include modems, storage devices (Zip drives and CD burners), networking equipment (hubs, cables and network cards), computer speakers, headphones, and surge protectors. Soon we will also stock Internet Games and Linux software. At the shop, you will also find free-to-use Internet access terminals. They are connected to a high speed link back to iiNet in the city, and are great if you need to quickly jump on the Internet! The Shop is located outdoors on the northern side of the shopping centre, between Australia Post and all the banks. It is directly opposite the City of Stirling Library. There is convenient parking next to the shop. An accompanying website will be launched soon that will allow you to shop online, and will include special offers. For your address book:
New Internet Legislation Recently, the federal government introduced a new bill that it plans to send through parliament that affects Internet access. The intent of the bill is to clamp down on the availability of RC, X and R rated material on the Internet. Whilst many agree with the intent of the bill, the Internet industry is dismayed at the way the bill proposes to address the problem. In essence, users will be able to complain to the government about content on the Internet. The government will then review it and if it is deemed inappropriate they will force the ISPs to remove it within 24 hours. However, in implementing this scheme, there are many loopholes and requirements that make it unworkable and potentially devastating on the growth of the Net in Australia. There are many issues, which are detailed in depth at the web pages at the end of this article, but just a few include:
The campaign against this bill is being spearheaded by Electronic Frontiers Australia, a group who is devoted to protecting civil liberties on the Internet. The WA Internet Association has also compiled a resources pages on the issue.
WAIA: http://www.waia.asn.au/Issues/Regulation/DCITA/ iiNet Games - Online Multiplayer Gaming iiNet has been running several gaming servers such as Quake since 1996. Over the years we have expanded the number and range of servers to include Kali (allows you to play most available games), QuakeWorld and several Quake2 servers. We originally started this service as a fun way for clients and staff to relax and it's quickly grown into a major reason to use the Internet for many people. In 1997 iiNet became one of the few ISP's in Western Australia with a dedicated gaming site, and collaboration between the various ISP's and players grew after the introduction of the WA Internet Exchange (http://www.waia.asn.au/Issues/Peering). Now in 1999 we're about to upgrade our gaming services to include a second Linux gaming server and introduce upcoming games such as Half-Life's TeamFortress Classic as well as the highly anticipated 'Quake3:Arena'. More information can be found on the iiNet Games site, or by emailing games@iinet.net.au.
A Note from Accounts To help us process your cheque payments quickly, please be sure to include the remittance slip at the bottom of the invoice with your payment. If you don't have the slip, please note both the invoice number and the username of the account with the payment. More Dialup Capacity iiNet is constantly in the process of increasing the number of modems on our system to provide better service to our customers. Due to the increase in the number of new clients, additional modems are being added to handle the increased demand. We are aware of some difficulties during the busier than usual Easter school holidays but we hope to have now met the demand. We have just finished an upgrade of approximately 240 lines bringing the grand total of lines available for our dial-in customers to over 3100. New Local Call Coverage iiNet now has two new Points of Presence (POPs) in Western Australia. They have been set up in Gingin and Margaret River. This has been done to provide a local connection to the Internet for people in the rural areas of W.A, adding to iiNet's services in Rockingham, Bunbury and surrounding areas. The POPs are connected back to iiNet in Perth by Fibre Optic Cable. This ensures that the connection is fast and provides a good connection for clients in those areas. The phone number for the Gingin POP is 9575 5000 and for Margaret River is 9757 0500. You can find out if you are a local call to these numbers by calling Telstra on 1222. If you're in the Avon Valley, but do not have local call access to the Gingin dialup, do not despair. iiNet aims to open a new point of presence in Toodyay by June that will offer local call access to locations like Toodyay, Northam and York. Lastly, as many of our clients know over time we have needed to change numbers to grow with new technology. If you have been connected to iiNet for more than 2 years and you are not sure if you are calling the most optimal number, please email us at support@iinet.net.au with your location and we can advise you. Many clients still call our old analogue dial-in numbers, and a quick change of phone number to a digital number will allow you to connect at the faster speed of 56k, and offer increased reliability for your connections. iiNet's Guide to Cyberspace We've launched a new version of the iiNet Internet guide. The new guide is a 128 page book with perfect binding, a slick new cover, and up to date information throughout. Called the "iiNet Cyberspace Travel Guide" it is now included FREE with all new Explorer accounts. Existing clients who wish to purchase the guide can do so for $15, which includes postage and handling. New Web Affiliate Account Over the past few months, iiNet has been looking at the popular Web Affiliate account, and looking for ways to make it even more attractive to our clients. To this end, we have created what we feel is a superior service, at no extra cost to our clients. As it stood, our web affiliate account offered:
o 20 MB of web space for hosting web pages o A fully registered domain name (such as mybusiness.com.au) o 20 E-Mail accounts o An iiNet "Explorer" account o Anonymous FTP to your web space o Support for advanced CGI, C and "Server Side Includes" o Optional UUCP support o Optional Secure server add-on Our new Web affiliate account now offers 50MB of web space, as many E-Mail accounts as you require within this 50MB, and the Secure server add-on now is only $200 rather than $600. We are also looking at introducing some exciting E-Commerce additions to this account. When finalised, we will inform all our Web Affiliate clients of these new services. The Web Affiliate account costs only $200 to set up (including the domain registration or redelegation), and then either $350 per quarter, or $1200 per annum. Salsa, our new web server iiNet has recently made some changes to the way our web servers are organised. Whilst the end result should have little effect on your web page publishing, it may interest those that are technically inclined as to what was involved. In the past, iiNet "Explorer" account users who had free web pages had their web sites stored on a machine called "opera". This machine also handles email. Due to iiNet's continuing growth, we have seen a need to split services on to multiple machines to increase performance and provide better redundancy. This has seen us move the web pages from opera to a new machine called "salsa". As a result, when you upload your webpages to opera as you did before, the "public_html" directory that you upload it to is now a virtual directory that is really on the salsa machine. When you access iiNet's website at http://www.iinet.net.au/~username/, salsa handles the request but by taking the pages you uploaded to opera. In Closing It is an exciting time here at iiNet. We are working at full steam to improve our products and services in a more competitive market. We are working in areas such as e-commerce, and hope to soon release new products that will allow you to put your business on the Internet and take orders with a minimum of fuss. Alas, the new Internet legislation is a big issue that the Internet industry is already into full gear to address. It would seem the ill-considered bill is an attempt by the government to get Senator Harradine to vote for the GST, and in the end this short term gain will result in massive long term pain for the Internet here in Australia. We urge you to get involved to stop this bill - contact your MP and make the issue known.
The iiNet Newsletter is compiled by the iiNet Staff and is published
every few months. Past issues are available from our website at
http://www.iinet.net.au/help/newsletters/
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