Greetings True Believers!
Over the last two years Dynaverse.Net has committed itself to continuing the Starfleet Command experience, even after Taldren closed it's doors.We've been consistant and reliable in running the directory services for SFC EAW and OP. We've incorporated new stuff, built on our existing infrastructure, and turned up new functionality to enhance everyone's experience in one way or another.
Back in Feb. of 2005, we announced our first
fund raising event. In this event, the supporters of Dynaverse.Net and the Dynaverse Gaming Association pledged about $644.00 for the year. We took that money and :
$450 went towards a new server -FRIGGA.XENOCORP.NET - a Compaq ML350 (dual 1.0GHz processors and 768 MB of ECC RAM) to handle the email for D.Net and all our hosted sites.
$150 went towards upgrading the comms server HEIMDALL with a new RAID card (went from a Smart Array /P to a Smart Array 3200 w/ 32mb onboard cache)
$44 went to Bear Technologies as this was the "leftover" and we thought it'd be appropriate to give Bear SOMETHING
Here's some interesting stats about JUST Dynaverse.Net:
Viewed trafficSummary
Reported period Month Jan 2006
First visit 01 Jan 2006 - 00:00
Last visit 26 Jan 2006 - 03:51
Unique visitors:6668
Number of visits: 22886 (3.43 visits/visitor)
Pages: 379834 (16.59 pages/visit)
Hits: 2394885 (104.64 hits/visit)
Bandwidth: 17.87 GB (818.7 KB/visit)
Want to see what our cabinet and servers look like?
Click HERE (link will be updated shortly)
Yes, that means in just this month we've pushed 17.87 GB in WEB DATA. Please note this does NOT INCLUDE FTP / FILES DOWNLOADS in the bandwidth - this is just the website itself.
We average about 20 or so GB in webdata a month, that's been pretty much the norm, and that's a lot of bandwidth for a site thats supporting a "end of life" gaming series
20 GB X 12 = 240 GIGS of data transferred each year in web data ALONE.
Dynaverse.Net is a volunteer organization who's ran by people that have dedicated themselves to NOT having to charge monthly fees. We've written it in our charter that we're allowed to run a yearly fund raiser for the site to be able to do just that - and it's that time again.
If you enjoy the Dynaverse.Net forums, or ANY of our services (Directory Services for SFC: EAW and OP, IRC for any community member to run for campaign servers, Teamspeak Server for the community [serving not just SFC but a whole slew of games, go check it out if you haven't], Website hosting and FTP hosting for the whole community, Email services for the community, Server campaign hosting for anyone that wants to run a campaign, Serverkit continuing research to incorporate MySQL support for upcoming campaigns, just to name a few
) then PLEASE consider donating.
I want to make it CLEAR that we have NOT received our paperwork from the State of Texas yet showing the Dynaverse Gaming Association is an offical Non Profit Organization, and part of that is because we've not paid the final fee of $235 for the filing. We HAVE received notification that once that fee is paid, we're about 2 months away from being a legitatime Non Profit organization. What does this mean? This means that your donating to D.Net, not the DGA. Due to some...misconceptions a few individuals seemed to have last year, I want to be forward on that right now.
Those of you who's donation last year met or exceeded the $20 minimum to become a voting member of the DGA had the difference notated, and you'll all be getting emails stating who owes dues, who doesn't, and how much you owe. Anyone that wants to renew now is welcomed to email or PM me to find out what, if anything, you owe for this year.
Everyone else, dig deep and donate
HERE, because we've got a couple things we need to move even further forward:
1. A new server for Dynaverse.Net: Bonk and I have been hashing out the details, but essentially we want to get a faster, more technologically up to date box for the website. Right now it's running on a Proliant 6000 ( quad 500 Mhz Pentium 3 Xeons), and while that may seem like a powerhouse, we've done testing that shows a single 2.8 ghz HT capable processor would do a lot better job at serving the webs. To that end, we're already working on progressing towards that goal. Hardware, heck if you've got it and want to donate it, let me know and we'll move faster
2. Upgrades for the existing servers. As you all know I work for a consultation company. In this capacity, I sometimes have access to older hardware that is end of life for our customers. There's a possiblity that one of our clients has another ML 350 that will be put out of production soon. To that end, we don't just "offer to take it off their hands", we offer to purchase it at the current market value so the customer can write off the hardware in their taxes.
3. Giving something back to Bear for the most gracious offer of hosting our servers and infrastructure with NO COST to you or me. For the full size (42U) cabinet we've got in the NOC, it would cost approximately $700 a MONTH to collocate, and this doesn't include bandwidth upgrades to handle our bandwidth
So, we ask you all to show your support and donate today. You can donate
HERE. We'd like to thank everyone who has already donated, and we want to thank everyone in advance that will donate. Considering we've almost got 2000 members now, it would be a relatively easy thing to raise $1000 or more for a new server. Dynaverse.Net will continue to lead the community in our offerings of support and development, how fast and efficiently is up to you.
Best wishes in this New Year of 2006 - let's start it off with a bang !Regards,
Frey
