Redbricks Intranet Collective (RIC) maintain the intranet that covers much of the estate and its Internet access. Internet access costs £5 per calendar month. RIC is a volunteer run community group that meets regularly. If you know people who want connecting tell them to contact us.
Since the new router was installed on 9/1/8 Internet access has been constant apart from occasional short outages that are the fault of the Phone Co-op. All your Internet software such as web, email, FTP, should work. See the Status Updates section below for more information. If you cannot get Internet access then it's likely to be an issue specific to you so get in touch. Use the Troubleshooting Wired Network Connection Issues (PDF) flow chart to help if you're having problems.
Your continued Internet use requires that you abide by our Reasonable Usage Policy of not downloading more than 3GB per month (similar to BT's 'basic' service). Everything you download or stream adds up, e.g. a 44 minute 640x360dpi film is 0.5GB. We monitor the total each person downloads.
Don't use peer2peer or torrent software as it's aggressive and costs us lots of time to shore our systems against.
To use the network and Internet your computer's local area network settings need to be: IP address: 192.168.x.x (x.x is specific to you); netmask: 255.255.248.0; gateway: 192.168.1.3; DNS: 192.168.1.3.
Contact RIC: email ric @ thephone.coop or telephone 07813-197-710 (leave a descriptive message including a way we can contact you).
Internet access is provided by the Phone Co-op, in theory it operates at up to 6Mb/s with a 20:1 contention ratio but isn't achieving that at the moment. You may be able to get service status information at the Phone Co-op service status page. They in turn rely on BT who have their own BT service status page.
The Internet access rate has been running at a maximum 0.6Mb/s for a while now, probably because of the Phone Co-op continuing to cap us. We're working on restoring the expected 6Mb/s rate as people have stopped the excessive downloading that the Phone Co-op objected to.
Parts of the intranet and thus the Internet unavailable between between 00:00 and 08:00 for some people because of a power failure in a flat.
Incoming Internet access rate for the estate has been running at a very slow maximum of 0.6Mb/s between 7/2/8 and 15/2/8 because the Phone Co-op throttled our rate due to the massive quantities a few people have been downloading. We've gotten these people to curtail their downloading and the Phone Co-op have removed their cap. But they will only allow us to download a maximum 100GB per month, which works out to 3GB per person per month. That might be enough for many people but consider that previously 5 people downloaded 125GB in 10 days of monitoring. We're looking into methods of monitoring and enforcing this.
Internet access was down between 08:45 and 10:00 because of an unknown issue out on the Internet out of our control.
We've implemented a login mechanism to control access to the Internet for those who pay. Your Internet software won't work until you go to any web site in a web browser and are redirected to our login page where you enter your username, password and login. If you're paid-up you should have been given this information recently. To get an account, or if you're having problems, contact RIC.
Incoming Internet access for the estate is running at a very slow maximum of 0.6Mb/s and has been for a couple of days. We don't yet know why. It may or may not be that the Phone Co-op are limiting us.
The Phone Co-op need us to stop downloading so much as of today. This includes streaming. We are their second largest downloader. In a sample we took, we downloaded 150GB in about 10 days. Just 5 people downloaded 125GB of that. Those 5 have been told they need to stop otherwise the Phone Co-op will throttle our connection or possibly cancel our service.
There's intermittant Internet access this morning, some web sites are accessable, some not, due to routing problems at the Phone Co-op.
We've replaced our router with a new machine and software. Subsequently all workarounds and sticking plasters helping keep the old router going have been removed so there's no longer a scheduled break in Internet access each afternoon.
There is no Internet access because the Phone Co-op decided the previous connection's username/password which we've been using fine on the new connection wasn't going to work any longer and didn't send us a new username/password.
There will be an interruption to our Internet access around the 3rd/4th December, which we are trying to keep as brief as possible. This is due to us having to move the Internet access equipment (router and modem).
We're as frustrated as you are with the current problems, and are working as best we can to resolve them. However, we are dependent on people and companies out of our control, as with any broadband service-user.
We are all volunteers, so please bear that in mind - help is welcomed; stinging criticism generally makes us less willing to put time in, as you'd imagine.
We get our service through the Phone Co-op; they in turn are reliant on BT Wholesale for the line. BT have finally acknowledged an intermittent fault, but have so far failed to resolve it despite engineers' visits & tinkering.
The Phone Co-op have given us a credit, so if you haven't already been given a free month by Hannah, please do ask for it if you want. If you're able to keep paying, despite the well dodgy connection that's great - any excess money goes into improving the reliability of the equipment that the intranet relies on.
As you should know, Peer to Peer does not work on the intranet, without messing up everyone else's web access. As you are a responsible community-minded person, you will therefore not have been using it. So you will not notice anything for the worse when we cut P2P off - hopefully this will improve the service for everyone. We would like to successfully allow it in the future, but this is dependent on: sorting out the reliability/speed of our connection, volunteer time, and extra money for a new firewall computer.
Please only call at the payment address (not described here) on Tuesdays or Fridays, 9am-9pm. This is only for payments, or if your flat is wired in but not currently connected, and you want connecting.
We have been giving regular updates, internet access allowing, with full details of the situation, on 'shout' - subscribe to that if you want to be kept informed on RIC and any other community matter people share on the 'shout' list. It's not very busy - redbricks@googlegroups.com
The server reboot times have been rationalised to once a day; internet access is therefore down for about half an hour, at about 1:50pm.
Unfortunately we are only contactable at the mo via our email address, ric @ thephone.coop
This and more can only be improved with your active involvement, so feel free to offer help of whatever kind to this community intranet.
Your RIC
Thanks to John Baxendale for hosting this site.