The End May Be Near Friday, March 23, 2001 Dear Folks: My main machine, linuxmafia.com AKA hugin.imat.com, may soon be off the Net for up to three weeks, a period of outage that may start at any moment, with no advance warning. My apologies for the inconvenience. Essentially, I was caught napping by the imminent collapse of Northpoint Communications, which has furnished SDSL transport to my house for my truly superb bandwidth provider, VIA.NET. If you are a self-sufficient computer user needing quality IP connectivity without the need to have your hand held in the San Francisco Bay Area, you need look no further than Joe McGuckin and his staff at VIA.NET. Because of Northpoint's bankruptcy and dissolution, VIA.NET will probably be unable to provide SDSL connectivity any more, and Northpoint's IP connectivity may be shut off at any time. I have just placed an order for replacement service through an equally highly reputable bandwidth provider for self-sufficient users, Raw Bandwidth Communications, Inc. Unfortunately, the lead time for provisioning is up to three weeks. (That delay is not RBC's fault, but rather the local telco's.) If/when my home connectivity is suddenly shut off, I may be able to restore access by locating the machine elsewhere, in much less than three weeks, but I cannot give advance details. There will also be an inevitable lag, when that happens, for my new DNS information to propagate. I will be able to be reached, during any lapse in service, at rick@deirdre.net, or telephone number 650-561-9820 (hm.). -- Rick Moen