NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/alt/bbs/5007

Text File | 1992-07-29 | 2.6 KB | 49 lines

Newsgroups: alt.bbs
Path: sparky!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!cavebbs!clear
From: [e-mail] (Charlie Lear)
Subject: Re: Multi-Line BBS's
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: The Cave MegaBBS, Public Access Usenet, Wellington, NZ
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 92 22:16:10 GMT
Lines: 38

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Aaron Bromagem)
quoted someone else but I zapped the attribution line:
>>Call the phone company and tell them you need 4 lines in a "hunt group".
>>That way, a caller dials one number and gets the first open (not busy)
>>line.

One caveat with hunt groups: BBS software, serial ports and modems can and
will fall over.  If you have a hunt group 1-2-3-4-5, and publicise it as
"Dial 838-8331 - five lines!", any problem which causes a modem to fail
will lock out all lines after it in the hunt group.  If modem 2 doesn't
reset properly, when node 1 is engaged all subsequent callers will get
an unanswered ring signal - because the telephone exchange is only forwarding
as far as the first non-busy line in the hunt group.  There may be nothing
wrong with nodes 3,4 and 5 but the callers don't get that far.

You will need either a phone on each line or some form of adapter to busy
out each line when you want to do maintenance on any specific node.  If
you don't busy it out, calls won't hunt past it.

Another point concerns the hardware on the end of the lines: you need to
have the same spec. modems on all lines in the group.  You can't, for example,
have a V32 modem on node 1 and three 2400 modems - you will only annoy V32
callers as they will almost always be shunted through to a slow node, when
they would rather redial until the fast one is free.  (Yes, you can have a
different modem on the last number in the hunt group, and tell people the
specific number to call, but that defeats the purpose of hunting.)

I got hunting on the first two lines of my BBS.  When I got another four,
I got separate lines.  The administration and maintenance hassles are a lot
less, and users don't mind adding numbers to their comms program directories.
This obviously doesn't apply to boards with (say) 10 or more lines - hunting
becomes practically the only option to avoid user confusion, unless you are
lucky enough to bag a range of numbers in sequence, eg 322-4322,23,24,25.

--
Charlie "The Bear" Lear | [e-mail] | Kawasaki 750GT DoD#0221
Ph/Fax [phone] |  You're not paranoid.  They really ARE out to get you.
  The Cave MegaBBS [phone] V32 | PO Box 2009, Wellington, New Zealand