Håvard S. Nisja, 2010-04-29 22:16
It is time to think outside the box. This web site has been up and down, and up again several times with little or no traffic the last 7 years, and I got to reconsider what this site should be all about. I would like to see it as an site for all Nisja's, both young and old, male and female, foreign and domestic (to Norway). Therefore, if anyone has an idea of what to do, give me a "Pssst!", and I'll see what can be done.
Some examples of services that I could provide would be:
Some of these services is relatively inexpensive, like DNS services, but others, most notably the file sharing, and to some degree, the homepages, will require some hardware like hard drives, and with these there would be some cost associated. These will be initially be payed for by me, but this could develop into a serious cost for me, so there will likely be payments required. Other services, like secure browsing, generates substantial amounts of data traffic, and this is a service we have to pay for. The price for data traffic is currently 200,- NOK. In a VPN like this, there won't be many users, a potential 250 people or so within Norway, and a lot more throughout the world. But considering that quite a large portion of these people won't ever have the slightest interest in participating in this project, a more probable number is 25-50 people/families. This translates into small initial costs, and you, the users, will be asked to make donations to help this project along. Having said that, I would also like to state the I'm not in this for the money, and the services provided by me will be free. Other costs however, like hardware cost, running costs like COLO fees, Internet connection fees and data traffic limit overrun cost will be divided among the users, or in other words: you and me.
An example of costs:
| Number of users | 30 |
| Number of months going over 100GB traffic data limit | 5 |
| New hard drives bought | 1 |
| What | Comment | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| COLO | Annual | Nkr 1.000,- |
| New hard drive | On demand | Nkr 1.000,- |
| Data traffic pr 100GB | Monthly nkr 200,- times 5 months | Nkr 1.000,- |
| Sum this year | Nkr 3.000,- | |
| Yearly cost per user | Nkr 100,- | |
| Monthly cost per user | Nkr 8,33 | |
As you see from this example, monthly costs will be low, and it will be equally low for a lower and higher number of users. The actual cost is at this point uncertain as traffic data for this project is unavailable until the project has been running for some time.
There is two ways to do this: The first one is to install a machine as a router between your Internet connection and the rest of the network, or directly connect each computer to the VPN. The easiest method for a single computer, is the direct connection from a PC to the VPN. If there are multiple computers and servers in the local network, a router is the preferred method. If you already have a working router (a old PC converted into router), its just a matter of installing the VPN software and configuring it. Otherwise its relatively easy to use an old PC, install Ubuntu with openVPN, configure it and your all set to go.
Other "recent" news include another change in the server software. I have now installed Ubuntu, a GNU/Linux based operating system of Debian decent. The server uses of course the server edition, and it features all of the features of Trustix. Why did I change again, do you ask? Well, the company that maintained Trustix, went bankrupt, started again, got sold, changed name of the distro to Commodo, changed it back to Trustix, and the final nail in the coffin was that all the maintainers quit the firm. In the end there was only one maintainer, a person located in India I believe, and having not enough time to do all the work required to maintain a distro, resulting in fewer and fewer followers. This was very sad, as this distro was great, and I had hoped that this could be a success history from Trondheim. This particular server is a COLO (COLOcation center) located at Multihost ITs server room in a collaboration with some friends. The benefits include a 100Mb Internet connection and 24/7 access to server-room.
Håvard S. Nisja, 2002-15-12
Nisja.net have, like the bird Phoenix, raised from the pyre again. Early in the fall of 2002, this server had to be reinstalled due to some strange combination of hardware and software problems. Making a long story short, it means that all data residing on the server were lost. All the web pages d other stuff. Is this really a problem? Well, YES, it is! Why? Because it means that I have to do all the work again, installing the server, configure it, secure it, install other software, write the web pages again, fix all of the little problems that might turn up, and I have to do this while juggling a job, my studies and my other spare time activities... In other words, I didn't have time to do it any faster than this. It was at least 2 years worth of work, lost in the void darkness of a server crash... Was anything of it important? Nah, not really, it's not like I get payed for this, and it's not my living, but it is very annoying losing it anyway, isn't it?
The crash also meant that I could install a far better Operating System on it as well. The decision fell upon Trustix, a GNU/Linux based operating system from a company located in Trondheim, Norway. Trustix is designed to be as secure as possible, and there is no services started by default in the standard installation. So far I'm very pleased with it, even though they have had some minor glitches in their packages. Now a days I'm just waiting for the release of Trustix 2.0. I have tried a preview of it, Trustix 1.8 (rainstorm), but it is not ready for the public yet, especially if you don't like fiddling about with it. Me, personally, like fiddling, but i found that there where too much to fiddle with to be happy with it.
Another decision made, was the transition from HTML to XHTML , though it is not yet completed for the whole domain as of des. 15, 2002. The sites from this domain already uses CSS2, and it is an powerful step towards the future in the web design field. Soon (hopefully anyway), is the completion of the next generation CSS. My only hope now, is that the browsers will try to keep up with the standards, and implement XHTML2 very soon, and hoping that people will upgrade even faster. I will certainly keep an eye on the development... The sad thing is that it just an working draft, and the recommendation won't be around for an another year or so. The recommendation isn't due before the summer of 2004.
So where are we going in the future? Of course there will be a news-section, login possibilities, articles, fun, Nisja-info (That's why we're here for, remember?), and other thing people might find interesting... Check back at a later time for updates.
Sist oppdatering av denne siden: 06.09.2017 @ 16:33.