Chapter 5 · 1996–1997

48 modems, still busy

ORION at its height: a chat room for Christmas, a new modem pool from the state, a city on the Web, and more people than the phone lines could hold.

• Dec 23, 1996IRC goes live
• 13,000+Active accounts, January 1997
• 27%Of ORION web traffic from Lynx, Dec. 1997
• 23,007Web requests a day, Nov. 1997

IRC for Christmas

The board had approved a chat system in September 1996 with some rules attached: open around the clock, but limited to two hours a day per user, and closed to guests.¹ It wasn't the worldwide EFnet. ORION's IRC was part of a statewide network MOREnet ran for Missouri's community networks, so ORION users shared channels with people on COIN in Columbia and WINthree. A MOREnet system administrator held the IRC admin role, and ORION's helpdesk staff were the channel operators.²

The software had been installed since November. Columbia gave the go-ahead at about 5 p.m. on December 23, 1996.³ ORION's usage nearly doubled after Christmas.⁴ The rules posted for it banned advertising, harassment, dumping text into a channel, beeping other users, and channel takeovers, which tells you what people tried.²

"we heard that IRC was the best and worst part of ORION."

The busy signal

In January 1997 ORION had 48 modems and more than 13,000 users with active accounts.⁴ It ran an online survey that month and got about 500 responses. The top complaints were the ones everyone already knew: no graphics, busy signals from 3 p.m. to midnight, and not enough time once you got through.⁴ By April the board's minutes said the analog modems were "undergoing considerable degradation of service."⁵

The rest of the Ozarks was having the same problem. In December 1996 America Online went to a flat $19.95 a month, and its local numbers jammed. AOL users who gave up moved to local providers; DIALnet in Springfield stopped taking new customers in late January 1997 until it could add 16 more lines.⁶

Help from the state

Relief came from Jefferson City. Missouri Express, a 1996 state program, gave community networks equipment and technical help rather than cash.⁷ In June 1997 it delivered a new 48-modem pool and two PRI lines to ORION. The board also set a target of no more than twelve users per modem for its new paid dial-up service.⁸ The federal NeighborNet grant ended that July. Anthony Young, the trainer it paid for, had taught 767 people to use ORION.⁸

                                                     ORION Homepage (p1 of 2)
   Ozarks Regional Information Online Network
     __________________________________________________________________

   About ORION. The Board, Friends of ORION, How you can help.
   Announcements.
   Education Center: Springfield Public Schools, RCET-SW, K-12 and Higher
   education.
   Library Center: Springfield-Greene County Library, other libraries
   Health Care Information Center: St. Johns, Cox Health Systems
   Government Information Center: City of Springfield, City Utilities,
   State and National Gov't.
   Public Square. Local newsgroups, IRChat, who is on the system, etc.
   Electronic Mail
   ORION Newsstand: Magazines, Newspapers, News, and Current Events
   Community Interests: Online Senior Center, Business Resources, Local
   History, Recreation, Employment, and much more.
   Family Time: Kidsclub, Teen Center, and Parents Place.
   Internet Resources
   Manage Your Personal Files and Information
   Help, Problem Report & Registration
     __________________________________________________________________
-- press space for next page --
  Arrow keys: Up and Down to move.  Right to follow a link; Left to go back.
 H)elp O)ptions P)rint G)o M)ain screen Q)uit /=search [delete]=history list

A city on the Web

On April 18, 1997, ORION's third birthday, Mayor Lee Gannaway cut a "virtual" ribbon on springfield.missouri.org, the Springfield Community Profile, a guide to the city built by eight local partners. ORION built it and agreed to keep it up.^5, 9 That fall it launched a Virtual Volunteer database at the Good Community Fair with 83 agencies signed up, followed by directories for churches and jobs.¹⁰

The software kept moving too. In the late summer of 1997 ORION upgraded to Lynx 2.7.1, which brought something new to text browsing: pages that wanted to set cookies now asked first, and Ctrl-K opened a "cookie jar" of what had been saved.⁶

Who was using what

ORION's statistics pages show what a mostly text network looked like at its peak. In December 1997, 41.6 percent of its web traffic came from Netscape, 27.2 percent from Lynx, and 23.8 percent from Internet Explorer. Over five weeks that winter, the mail pages got 22,141 hits, the Internet resources 12,889, and the Public Square 4,152. The Kids Club got 109.¹¹

Graphical access was finally on offer, for a price. ORION's paid "Galaxy" accounts, with PPP and pictures, had 44 members in October 1997 and 58 by December.¹⁰ Nearly 16,000 people had active accounts.¹⁰ The question for 1998 was how long a free text network could pay for itself.