Our Link to the Internet
Our Web Server
For the first six years we ran our own Web server here in Barcroft, but in 2001 we moved the hosting of our Web page to Pair Networks. They have a very large server farm in Pittsburgh, PA. They are connected to multiple Internet backbones, and have power backup and all the other features needed to be ultra reliable. We find their user interface very well developed and easy to use. Their prices are low but they have been profitable since 1995. Download speed has been very good, reliability is tops, and we are pleased with Pair. They have a page that showcases some of the sites they run. We used our network watcher machine to monitor some of those sites every three minutes for about three months before deciding to go with them. We continue to monitor our server with the same monitor software and although there are occasional dropouts, they are short and are more often on our Barcroft DSL connection than theirs.
Mail
Pair also runs our SMTP mail server, on the same machine as the Web page. We have set up relay accounts for anyone active in the BSCL that just relay mail addressed to person@bscl.org to their own ISP.
Monitoring
We use Caravelle's WebWatch to monitor our servers and page us if anything goes down, but we don't really recommend it unless you are addicted to fiddly systems work. It does a nice job of keeping up with both our remote Web server and our local LAN machines, but it was a pain to set up. Every time we restart it the software attemps to send a message to Caravelle. We don't know what it says, but we usually trap the packet.
To keep our pages lean and fast-loading on slow home connections we do not use advanced techniques on our own pages and
keep our graphics intentionally spare to avoid overload those with limited bandwidth. Our goal is to have every page except our photos load quickly and be accessible to any browser. Each of
our pages sets up the locations of the graphics files when the initial text file downloads so that you can read text immediately while the graphics are still filling in. We believe that a
neighborhood page should be comfortable to use from a slow home link.
Our Domain
BSCL.org has been our domain name now since 1996. Barcroft.org belongs to the Barcroft Bible Church, which was born in our neighborhood but moved out to Fairfax some years ago.
This page was last revised on: April 4, 2002.
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