long time no write. I've been off having a life, you see.
As it stands now, having signed a two-year lease on Friday,NEXUS-Melbourne
is 4,500 square feet on the first floor of a building on Swanston Street,
the main street in Melbourne, Australia.
There will be six people living there. Currently there are two people
living there now, myself and Simon (who was living with me in TAZ (which
was meant to be NEXUS-Melbourne) when it self-detsructed just after Easter).
The other 4 will move in over the next month as they sort out their current
residences, have time, etc.
The set-up will be five bedrooms at the front of the place, each with
balconies overlooking Swanston street, some rooms down the south side (it
faces west) which will contain a library, a meditation room/temple, plus
whatever else we feel like (we're talking about a sewing/craft room), the
kitchen will not bea seperate room but an area at the back of the building,
there will be a silversmithin workshop at the rear as well.
The rest of the area will be an open-plan space with parquetry floors which
will double as a dancefloor (we're all ravers, and we'll be getting in a
pair of 1200s, a mixing desk and a rave-quality PA), lounge/entertainment
area, etc.
Downstairs will be where Koan Media Productions Pty. Ltd., of which I am
a director, will run a combination ISP, WWW authoring consultancy and
an advertising/graphic design/publishing house.
Koan has several computer system retailers who will feed us a steady stream
of enquiries (we expect to generate 10-80 accounts per week from this) as
well as a very large number of people who have heard about us via word of
mouth and who desire accounts with us (it's useful knowing lots of people),
as well as several firms wishing permanent and dial-up connections, and
there are half a dozen companies I am negotiating with at the moment WRT
advertising on the net.
At this point in time, demand for access to the net in Melbourne far, FAR
outsrips the supply, and for the next 6-12 months internet access will be
something people are prepared to pay a lot of money for.
We plan to offer dial-up SLIP/PPP access at $80 setup, $30 per month and $3
per hour. This is pretty much the standard price in Melbourne, although the
average hourly charge is betwen $5 and $8 per hour. We plan to charge $3.
The .au-.us link via AARNet is ferociously congested at the moment, and I
have been getting daytime transfer rates between overseas sites and my
university account of 1-5k per second. The link was upgraded from 6
megabits to 10 megabits a couple of months ago, and this link was saturated
within 7 hours. Our link goes via a private link to the US, and we are
guaranteed that this link will never be more than 50% congested. If
congestion at any time exceeds a sustained level greater than 50%, we are
guarenteed that the link will be doubled. This, coupled with the fact that
our modems will all be 28.8k modems, means that the Koan ISP will offer
very good value for money, and will hopefully be a roaring success, given
that we will be cheaper than any comparable ISP in Melbourne AND offer a
much faster link.
There is no doubt in our minds, however, that the entire affair will at
least pay it's own way, meaning that once the ISP gets off the ground,
NEXUS-Melbourne wull have a permanent link in excess of 192K for at *least*
the next 2-3 years, and hopefully it will be much faster and last a *lot*
longer (who knows where I'll be in 3 years? I don't).
There's some talk of some friends of ours setting up a screen and designing
and making T-shirts in part of the place, but we're not sure if we'll go
ahead with it or not.
Koan is receiving $40,000 in venture capital from a private investor. So
far we have received $5,000 and the rst is turning up Real Soon Now. Once
the rest of the funding eventuates, the ISP gets off the ground.
The ISP will run out of a pentium-90 with 32 meg of RAM and 6 gig of drive
space, networked into two 486-100 computers, each with 16 meg of RAM and 1
gig of drive space. The pentium will be the main server, the 486's are
basically personal machines for myself and the other director, and will be
used for general HTML work, etc. We're considering hiring some power macs
as well.
NEXUS-Melbourne will be wired up via an initial 192K ISDN connection, going
into a 10 megabit Australia-wide network, which connects to the rest of the
universe via a 4-megabit link to MCI somewhere in the US.
AARNet, the major Australian arm of the Internet, has a 10 megabit US link,
for comparison. The 10 megabit link and its 4 megabit overseas feed belong
to the ISP we are getting our feed from, by the way.
We're not sure when the ISP will be getting off the ground. We'd hoped to
be open by Christmas, but the funding is moving slowly. That's fine by us,
as we'll be busy renovating the place for the next month. Currently, I live
in what used to be the offices of a largish accounting firm, and we have to
tear down shitloads of partitions, etc, and remove the false celiing to
expose the *real* ceiling, which is 35 feet high.
More details when they come to hand, I remember them, or I can be bothered
typing them in. I have a lot to say, but it's late, and I've had 12 hours
sleep in 5 days (holidays have started. Lots of parties. Ack).
Having learned my lesson, I'm not prepared to prematurely announce things.
The lease was signed on Friday. Simon and I started moving our gear in
Friday afternoon/evening, and we both now live there. The ISP -will- get
off the ground, as the funding has been guarenteed to us, but we're unsure
precisely when it wil come through. It appears we'll get it within a week,
but it -is- the xmas season, so it might be a couple of weeks away. In the
meantime, I have been magically transformed from an overly idle
historian/rave promoter into a builder. Woo woo.
I'll get the rest of the poeple involved to write introductions. We can't
get a phone connected until Thursday, so my net.connection at this point in
time will be erratic, but I'll log in every couple of days and check my
mail, so feel free to reply to this message or not, as you see fit.
We have 10 toilets and 4 showers. This should be a good place to hold
parties in.
Dwayne.
-]>------ ddraig@pobox.com <-----<<<
or
<----- --- -- -- - - hiscdcj@lux.latrobe.edu.au - - -- -- --- ----->
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<a href="http://pobox.com/~ddraig">Dwayne</a>
<a href="http://www.latrobe.edu.au/nexus/HTML/">NEXUS-Australia</a>
r e t u r n t o t h e s o u r c e
"give me chemistry or give me death"