Monday - Friday 9 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Saturday 9 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Evenings and weekends by appointment.

December has seen some tremendous growth and we will be adding additional dial-up lines in the Paola office right after the first of the year. In addition to this growth, we have several large projects in mind for 1999. The first we hope to have completed during the first quarter of the year. Once things have been finalized, I will make the announcement here.

56k Dial-up Lines:
We have been receiving many requests about upgrading our modem dial-up lines to support 56k connections. Our answer has been that the expense involved in doing this was unreasonable and in some cases, the quality of the phone lines in the rural areas would probably not support the faster speeds. The phone companies state they are surprised that all the lines support speeds faster than 14.4bps to begin with. Because of the large number of requests that we have received, I have looked further into the possibility of completing this upgrade. As expected the cost is unbelievable for my special telephone lines and the new equipment that is required to be purchased. Because of the continued interest, growth of the Internet and progression of technology, I am now giving serious thought of adding the equipment, a special dial-up number and as many as 24 new telephone lines specifically for 56k dial-up customers to take advantage of.

The question is, are the customers that are interested in taking advantage of the 56k dial-up access willing to pay an additional $10 per month for the increased speeds? This would bring your typical monthly Internet dial-up access rate to $29.95 (plus tax) for 56k access. In order for us to determine the real need to make this move, I would like to hear from the 56k modem users by e-mail expressing their desire to take advantage of the 56k access and their willingness to pay the higher rate for this access. I will keep everyone updated as to the interest this generates.

Louisburg High School:
The T-1 line for dedicated access for the Louisburg High School has been installed and tested by Southwestern Bell and MoKan Dial. We have installed and configured the required hardware in our Paola office for the completion of the connection. Once installation and configuration of the equipment is completed by LHS representatives at the High School, their dedicated Internet access will be in operation throughout the school.

Not real funny (at the time):
This last Wednesday afternoon, all day Thursday and most of Friday was not much fun for me. I spent this time with my office computer not functioning and out to be repaired under warranty. It seemed like several times an hour I would turn to look something up in the accounting program, find something on the Internet or simply to send or check for e-mail and find no computer. This was very frustrating. I am now very aware of just how important and how much we can become dependant on these blasted machines in our daily lives. At least I still had my computer at home to send and receive e-mail. I can smile at the situation now, but at the time, it was not too funny. Yes, even we have computer problems from time to time.

First, since this is the first day following a severe storm, it is a good time to ask, did you remember to unplug your modem from the phone line? Well, at least 4 customers did not and did not get lucky. Surges through the telephone lines cause more damage then through electric lines because customers fail to purchase surge protectors that includes telephone line protection.

Ever since last December we have seen a high rate of new customer growth with very few customers cancelling our service. Usage has maintained an even level throughout the summer when we had expected it to decrease. To keep up with this usage and new customers we have increased our modem bank in Paola to 88 lines as recently as a month or so ago and expect to reach 96 lines before the end of September. It is possible to look at our current modem usage and history back as far as July 7, 1998. We had hoped to have this same usage chart available for our 20 Louisburg lines, however other matters have kept us from completing this programming task.

And Louisburg? Everything is going well. We have had some problems with modems not resetting when the customer disconnects, but have been able to narrow the problem down to two customers and have determined that our modems are not resetting under special circumstances related to customers equipment. We had already upgraded our equipment to a capacity of 64 lines and will not change back to the old hardware even though we have determined that all was working properly to start with. Our welcome into the community has been very exciting and we hope to continue to provide Louisburg with high-quality Internet access for a long time to come.

For those who have not visited our For Sale page, I suggest you take a few minutes and see what special items our customers and we have to offer. I think you will find our pricing in supplies more than competitive. While supplies last, I am offering IBM pre formatted 1.44MB floppy disks for a reduced price of only $1.50 per box of 10 disks. Good luck finding a lower price anywhere!! We also have just received a large shipment of the Imation LS-120 drives. These external drives are similar to Zip drives, except they hold 120MB of data, connect through your parallel port and will also read and write to a normal 1.44MB floppy disk. If there is a special item you need and do not see listed, please call and ask, we may be able to get and stock it for you for your future needs.

Things have been very busy at Miami County Internet OnRamp, Inc. If you did not notice, "Inc."!! We have completed all of the changes required for our incorporation. It has been a long and tedious process to complete with all the other activity going on.

As recently as last week we completed the addition of 4 more lines in Louisburg. This brings us to 20 lines in use at this time with the equipment in place for as many as 32 lines. Growth since December 1997 has been awesome in Paola but especially in Louisburg where after less then 4 months we have signed up more than 90 customers. I want to extend a special thanks to Bob Powers (and his family) at RPM Computers for all the support and help they have provided in getting customers on-line in Louisburg. This by no means intends to diminish the support and help we have been receiving from Harlen Fletcher at Computing Simply and Robert Riggs at Riggs Computers, both located in downtown Osawatomie. It is wonderful that we are all able to work so well together to provide Internet access and other computer related services to the residents of Miami County.

In order to monitor our line usage, we have setup a program that looks at the number of lines in use every 5 minutes then places this information into graph form for easy analysis. This will assist us in determining when it is time to add additional dial-up lines for our customers. The Paola dial up chart is in use with history starting on July 7th. We hope to have the Louisburg chart up in the next few days.

We also have graphs available from our Cisco routers that display the amount of bandwidth we are using on our T1 lines. Again this is used to evaluate if we continue to provide high quality Internet service to our customers by not creating an Internet bottle-neck on our system. We can not control what happens further onto the Internet, but we will certainly make sure that our equipment and lines are not being used over capacity and creating slow-downs. The Paola to KC chart has been up since February and the Louisburg to Paola chart will be operational shortly. Because these charts are password protected, we will not be providing a link for customers to look at them. However, if anyone is interested in seeing our Internet equipment, learning what each piece does or taking a look at our usage charts, please feel free to visit our Paola office.

Our office will be closed Wednesday, July 22nd, for an Internet Service Providers seminar in Kansas City. We will resume our normal hours on Thursday. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

The City of Paola has completed their web site as well. Please visit their site at www.ci.paola.ks.us

As I mentioned before, we have been doing the final configurations on our own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server. I have created a web page to help our users download and configure an IRC client. Please visit our site at www.micoks.net/mirc_setup.html

In observance of Memorial Day on May 25, our office will be closed.

It's hard to believe, but May 29th marks two years that we have been providing Internet access to residents of Miami County. It has been a great pleasure to have been the first ISP and still the largest and most reliable source for the Internet in Miami County. We will continue to provide reliable access to our existing customers as well as continue our aggressive approach to growth in order to meet the demands and needs of our new customers in the years to come. Thanks for your continued support.

The good: growth continues, in both Paola and Louisburg. The new customers continue to come in at a very pleasing rate. With the addition of Chris to our staff, things are running very smoothly in getting new customers setup as well as servicing existing customers with problems.

The better: as we continue to grow, we need additional dial-up phone lines. Wrong! We have found that usage goes down somewhat during the summer months, so even as we are adding new customers at an alarming rate, the growth has not required any recent expansions. This is a very good thing. I need this break to catch up on the expenses of the past upgrades.

The new: do you like to use chat servers? The thrill of talking to strangers all over the world is very interesting. The anonymity created can be wonderful. But what about talking with others in your area or talking with other MCIO users? We are pleased to announce that we are now operating our own IRC server. Please keep in mind, this is not a point and click option for your browser that will take you to a web site like parachat. We are setting up an actual chat server. This will be specifically for our customers and their chat friends to use. It is currently up and running and we are using it on the Internet while we complete the configurations. I'll let everyone know when it is ready for general use and how to get to it.

There has been some rumors get back to us that there may be some type of problem related to our e-mail service. If anyone has been having a continued problem since December when everything was setup and working properly, please contact our office immediately so we can assist you. Since the final configuration of QMAIL and the proper assignment of addresses from Internic when we changed IP addressing, everything has been operating perfectly to our knowledge. If you are having a problem or think you are having a problem, please talk with US and we will be able to help you with your specific needs.

For those who have not noticed, there is now a text area on the main page that I have been updating with important information. I have moved the movie listing for the Midway Drive-In to the top of my newsletter. Please check here for movie listings each week.

There are several major projects in the works for both Louisburg and Paola, but until things are final, I need to keep my mouth shut. One thing that I am pleased to announce is that Miami County Internet OnRamp is changing its name. Don't worry, nothing extreme, just adding INC to the end. Yes, effective this month, Miami County Internet OnRamp has become Incorporated. This change does not effect our customers, but it does change the way the business reports and pays taxes.

We have upgraded the number of dial-up lines to 16 in Louisburg. The phone company installed enough cabling in the beginning for us to have more than 90 dial-up lines. This gives us plenty of room for future expansion. Customers have been coming very fast and usage has been very heavy. These 16 available lines should provide some relief. We will never let our customer to modem ratio go so high that busy signals become a problem.

Last month in the Paola office, we upgraded to 80 dial-up lines. With the present cabling installed by Southwestern Bell, we have the capacity to grow to more than 175 lines with great ease. With our recent growth, we will continue to add more dial-up lines as needed to prevent busy signals.

Chris Lane started full-time in our Paola office this past Monday. He has already proven to be an asset for providing customer support and help with computer upgrades. Most of our technical support calls and Internet setups will be going through Chris, but should something stump him, Boz or I will always be around to help.

We want to express our greatest thanks to our dedicated customers. Without you, we would not be possible.

I almost forgot, we have added an additional 5 dial-up lines, giving us a total of 80 lines in Paola. We are still at 10 lines in Louisburg, but will be adding some very soon, as new users increase.

While purchasing the equipment for Louisburg, I have also upgraded the router in our Paola office. We are now using a Cisco router here as well as in Louisburg. The Livingston router that we had used since starting service in May of 1996 will be retired and kept as a spare or possibly used in another location, such as Hillsdale, at a later date. These Cisco routers use a different protocol than the Livingston, so that when connected to another Cisco, like our provider in Kansas City uses, the transfer rate of data is just a little more efficient.

I am sorry to announce that Patrick Roberts has decided to make a change from working with computers to a more spiritual avenue in life and is no longer working part-time and will not be working full-time this summer for Miami County Internet OnRamp. His computer knowledge, Internet abilities and friendly personality will certainly be missed. I have hired Chris Lane to help us with Internet setups, technical support and computer service. Chris will become a valuable asset to us very quickly, I'm sure. He has already started part-time until he can join us full-time on April 6th.

The work toward local access in the Louisburg area is progressing quite well. MoKan Dial is working very hard to complete their cabling early. We are still looking at a start up date of the 19th. If things work out that access is available early, I will post a notice here.

If you had not already noticed, we have started placing a date next to the newsletter, e-mail address and help wanted links on our main page so you know when things were last updated. We will do the same as we make changes to the other links.

Two times this week Southwestern Bell has had a problem of some sort that has effected our T1 data line to Kansas City to our provider. Like everything else in life, even Southwestern Bell is not perfect.

Once a problem is detected my myself or Boz we have to come to the office to determine exactly what is wrong. If it is the T1 line, we have to report it to Southwestern Bell for them to starting testing the line to find where the problem is. This can sometimes take more than an hour. After all, it is Friday the 13th. ;-)

Sometimes things just don't work..........

During the past week or so, we had been experiencing some difficulty with our new modems and connections working correctly the first time. I spent most of Tuesday and all of Wednesday working with our vendor on upgrading the firmware in the new modem rack. Hayes was aware of some problems and this upgrade was made available to help solve some of the problems. So far, since the e-mail and phone calls have almost stopped, we assume things are back to working fairly well. During the many hours of conversation with the vendor, one of the things we learned was some of the detailed operations of our terminal server. When a customer disconnects from a modem, the telephone company switch immediately shows that line as available. Our terminal server then takes 1 second to send a reset code (initialization string) to the modem that resets it for the next incoming call. This one second delay may be responsible for an incoming call to just ring and get no answer. The line is open from the phone company, but the modem is still being reset, so it will not answer. If it does not answer after 2 or 3 rings, it won't. Just cancel and then redial. This firmware upgrade is reported to help solve the problem of customers getting garbage on their screen during a log in. Another problem we hope to have solved.

Does it sound like we have had a busy week, well the best news is yet to come.

Assuming no major disasters, the number of active customers, in good standing, will surpass 500 this month. A couple items of interest go along with this. I have said many times, when we started this in May of 1996, I had hoped to have maybe 200 customers after 2 years in business. As things continue to progress, we will be well on our way to 600 customers when we reach our 2nd anniversary. With the good, also must come the bad. The cost of providing our service also must continue to climb with the number of customers to maintain the quality of service we provide. I continue to hope that at some point I will be able to quit my second job. I won't know how to sleep all night. As we have grown, we have managed to maintain a customer to modem ratio of less than 8:1. When we pass the 500 customer mark, we will have a 6.6:1 ratio. Far below the industry average of 12:1.

Had enough yet? Think we should be busier? Check this out.

I am pleased to officially announce that I have placed the order for the dedicated circuit, customer dial up lines, and the necessary hardware to get Louisburg a second, more reasonably priced option, for Internet access. The hardware is just several days away, but it will take the phone company several weeks to have the required cabling completed to be able to provide us with the amount of services ordered. At this time, we have a scheduled date of March 19th when we can starting proving Louisburg area residents a local number to access Miami County Internet OnRamp. Just as with our Paola and Osawatomie area customers, dial up access will be only $19.95 per month, plus tax (total of only $21.33) plus a one time setup charge of only $25. Windows '95 customers already have the needed software available on their computer and can upgrade to newer software free on the Internet. Windows 3.x customers will be provided a shareware package of software that will allow them access to the Internet. Additional software and upgrades are also available free on the Internet. Just like our existing customers, Louisburg area customers will be provided free technical support over the telephone using our toll-free number and we will always be available for an on-site visit if required. The Louisburg area residents who have called in the past, please call back and leave your name and number and we will contact you once we are ready to provide service.

I have added items and reduced the price of others on our For Sale page. Please take a minute to see if there is something we have that you may desire. Our prices are amazingly low! Shop and compare!!

We have also added a new link to our main page. Help Wanted is a listing of two positions that Miami County Internet OnRamp is now accepting applications for. We are planning an aggressive advertising campaign and promotion of our services which will require someone being added to our staff to meet our needs. Since we now have our office working very smooth again, we are now taking an aggressive approach to offering our service in Louisburg. This additional dial-in customer base will require someone in that area to help with local support. Read the details listed on the page, and if you are interested, please do as directed.

Busy signals? What! Well, this will be taken care of!! I will be ordering additional telephone lines from Southwestern Bell today (Thursday) in order to increase the number of customer dial-in lines to 70. Once again, thanks to your support we are able to increase the quality of service we can provide to our customers. These additional lines will drop our modem to customer ratio to less then 6.5:1. Far below the national average of 12:1. Helping to make Miami County Internet OnRamp the premier Internet Service Provider in Miami County Kansas.

I would like to thank everyone who took the opportunity to take advantage of our special yearly rate offer that ends today. Not only did this special rate provide you with Internet access for an average of only $14.22 per month over a period of a year, it also reduced the amount of time and paperwork in our office that is required each month for our billing.

Effective January 1, 1998, we started charging a $5 late charge for payments not received in our office by the 10th of each month.  We bill approximately 2 weeks prior to the payment due date (the first of each month) and this will allow an additional 10 days before this penalty will be enforced.  Those not making payment by the 15th of the month will have their service suspended pending payment-in-full. Because the 10th fell on a weekend and we have been extremely busy in the office, I did not mail statements to customers until the 13th. These statements included a letter stating that customers not making payments by Saturday the 17th at 1:00 PM would be suspended from accessing the Internet. If we find that we have a large number of people that are suspended each month and then want service restored, we may start charging a re connection charge as well. We provide a quality service to our customers for a very reasonable rate. To have your paycheck held or given to you weeks behind schedule for work you perform is the same as customers not making their monthly payments for service they use. It can make operating a business just as difficult as running a household with out paychecks coming in.

Accidents do happen. We understand someone forgetting about making their monthly payment. If e-mail billing is making it difficult for you, let us know and we will change you back to postal mail billing. Please remember that we now accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discover as payment options. We can automatically bill your credit card on the 25th of each month and send you an e-mail as notification of this being done. You have to do nothing. We take care of it all in our office. If this is an option you would like to discuss, please call the office to have it set up.

Shhhhh. There is still one Santa Hat someplace on the micoks.net web site that has not been found. Be the first to send me the number underneath it and you will win the last remaining prize package available. Since this contest was to end 3 weeks ago, it is now open to all customers, as well as previous winners. Good Luck!

This change also included replacing some of our existing hardware to new, more efficient equipment. In the last 48 hours, we have determined that the equipment that was removed seemed more forgiving to those users who did not have their settings exactly correct. The new equipment requires all settings to be correct. Windows 3.x users must have the Name Server set to 209.153.98.2 in Trumpet Winsock; Windows '95 users must have their Name Server in Dial-up Networking set to 209.153.98.2 , the DNS configuration for TCP/IP in Control Panel/Network set to 209.153.98.2 , and the Gateway for TCP/IP in Control Panel/Network set to 209.153.98.1 Using these settings, everything should work with no problems at all.

For users with Windows '95 that are still bringing up the black Terminal Window to enter your log in name and password, it is no longer necessary to do this. Please call our office and we will walk you through the correct way to log in.

In addition to all of this, on Tuesday the 6th we upgraded our Internet sendmail program to a more efficient and file-server friendly program called q-mail. Please make sure that your e-mail POP3 and SMTP settings reflect mail.micoks.net for the mail servers.

We want to apologize for any inconvenience these changes have caused. To remain the number one ISP in Miami County, we must continue to grow and enhance the services and quality of service we provide to our valued customers.

Winners:

Saturday 12/13 - Richard Ward found #335 on the newsletter page - too easy!
Sunday 12/14 - John Spellman found #672 on the More Search Engines page
Monday 12/15 - Perry McPheeters III found #289 on the For Sale Terms page
Tuesday 12/16 - Robert Marriott found #782 on our main page
Wednesday 12/17 - Carl Gregg found #629 on the Hosted Web Pages page
Thursday 12/18 - Patricia Whalen-Hodgkinson found #462 on How to Publish a Web Page
Friday 12/19 - Kenneth Diehm found #632 on the Mi Co Business Directory page
Saturday 12/20 - Casey Folsom found #232 on the E-mail Address Page
Sunday 12/21 - Lowen Most found #734 on our Support (About MCIO) page
Monday 12/22 - Amanda Raabe found #536 on the About MCIO page
Tuesday 12/23 - Kenneth Diehn found #858 in the MCIO Membership Agreement page
Wednesday 12/24 - David Biller found #255 on the Hotspots/Entertainment page

Please note: Miami County Internet OnRamp will be going off-line at approximately 5AM Sunday January the 4th for the purpose of upgrading our dial-in equipment.  We will be back on-line once this is completed.  This will be before 12 noon because I have a Chiefs game to attend.  GO CHIEFS!!!!

This upgrade involves replacing all of our external 28.8 modems with a new 64 modem modem-rack operating at 33.6 with 56k capability.  Once this unit is in place, we will have the hardware capacity for 96 customer dial-in lines.  By far the largest ISP in Miami County!

These external 28.8 modems will be made available to our customers desiring to upgrade their connection to speeds of 28.8.  Pricing for these modems will be $45 each.  Please feel free to call our office for additional information.

This upgrade will also see all of our equipment being moved from the shelves to an equipment rack designed for this type of equipment.  This rack will require considerably less room to store more equipment than the current shelves., so we are constructing a work bench are for the purpose of providing hardware upgrades and service on computers at a VERY reasonable rate.  This will include mother boards, modems, hard drives, CPU's, etc.  And please remember us when looking for a NEW system as well.

Please excuse the mess in our office while we prepare for these changes.  We hope to have everything in order by the first part of the week.

Please note that effective January 1, 1998, we started charging a $5 late charge for payments not received in our office by the 10th of each month.  We bill approximately 2 weeks prior to the payment due date (the first of each month) and this will allow an additional 10 days before this penalty will be enforced.  Those not making payment by the 15th of the month will have their service suspended pending payment-in-full.

This late charge will not be imposed on past due amounts prior to the billing for January 1998 service, however, memberships with any past due balance on January 15th will be suspended pending payment-in-full (unless other arrangement were previously made).

If you have any question that you may have missed a payment one month, please check with us to prevent an interruption of service.

Please visit our home page and view the Newsletter and For Sale pages for additional important information.

Once again, we want to thank you for your business.  Without your continued support, the high level of service we provide would not be possible or increased and improved upon as frequently as we do.