Frequently Asked Questions

· Who is Networking Enterprises?
· What is "shared Broadband (at least 1.5 mbits) service"?
· What are alternative services to a "Shared Broadband"?
· What kind of uptime can I expect?
· Can my traffic be seen?
· Do you support email?

Who is Networking Enterprises?
Networking Enterprises is a division of HKB Associates. NE provides broadband Internet connectivity to multi-unit businesses and apartment buildings such as the Warehouse. NE has been in business since December, 1996. HKB Associates provides statistical analysis and related services for national and international companies. Through its wholly owned subsiderary, DeNovo.Net, we provide local businesses with web design and web site hosting services. HKB has been serving clients since 1980 and web clients since 1997.

What is "shared Broadband (at least 1.5 mbits) service"?
A Broadband (at least 1.5 mbits) line having a transmission capacity of 1.5 megabits per second (about 28-30 times faster than a 56kb modem) normally costs $400 to $1500 per month depending on the type and the contract length of the service. Clearly that's more than most individuals would care to support. To enable the economical "sharing" of a Broadband Connection, computers (one, or two with special arrangments) are connected to a Local Area Network (LAN). Hubs, switches and routers support the LAN. The capacity, or bandwidth, of the connection is sufficient to carry many dozen simultaneous users involved in routine surfing or course work with no user being aware of another. To insure the fair use of the shared resource for everyone, it is not possible to host web sites on your personal computer. Also peer-to-peer file sharing programs (e.g. Napster, KaZaA) may be used ONLY if "File Sharing" feature is disabled.
Due to its design some computer games will not play across the LAN. However such games should function normally among bedrooms in the same apartment. We won't ask how such gaming increases one's GPA.

What are alternative services to a "shared Broadband (at least 1.5 mbits)"?
A normal voice grade telephone line can support computer communications at a speed of 56k bits per second (baud) through a modem. For a variety of reasons effective speeds for such a connection will average around 40k bits per second. Certain regular voice lines can support a relatively new service, DSL, available through many local phone companies. This service rivals Broadband speed, and permits the simultaneous use of your regular phone while you surf the Internet. Contact your local phone company for more information on this service. At this time DSL, which requires copper phone wiring, is not available in the Warehouse. Another option is cable Internet connection through the local cable TV company. Contact your cable TV supplier for more information on this service.

What kind of uptime can I expect?
Outages happen for a variety of reasons, e.g. power failure, equipment malfunction, telephone line failure. Since October 1999, when the Warehouse came "on line", NE has experienced dozens of power interruptions but only one has exceeded the capacity of our UPSs (uninterruptible power supply). That event carried the name "Fran". We maintain UPSs in each telephone closet to protect our hubs and switches from outages of up to twenty minutes.

Note: it is your responsibility to protect your own equipment from power failures. A good UPS for the typical desktop is available today for less than $75. Invest in one.

Since we began providing service to the Warehouse we have had fewer than a half dozen hub or switch failures. The longest outage of which we're aware affected some residents for about 36 hours. It occurred following a record snow fall that prevented out technicians from reaching the office for more than a day. We have never experienced a local telephone line failure.

Events with our ISP (internet service provider), or with the Internet itself are somewhat more common, e.g. circuit failure leading to increased traffic on a backup circuit with concomitant reduction in response time, DNS server failure, scheduled down time for maintenance. Occurring about once a month, on average, these events are generally over in 10-15 minutes and in our experience have never lasted longer than four hours. Networking Enterprises is unusual in that we maintain broadband connections with two different providers. Should the provider supplying connectivity to the Warehouse go off line for an extended period (or out of business), the Warehouse connection will be switched, in our offices, to the second supplier. That has been necessary three times in 30 months.

Can my traffic be seen?
The short answer is "yes". Communications over the Internet are broken into "packets" of bytes (characters). We employ monitoring software at the switches, DHCP server, and router level to track the flow of packets. This monitoring is intended to insure that resources under our control do not limit response time to your surfing. When you attach a computer to the LAN, the system reads the address of your NIC (network interface card). This address will be registered in the monitoring software. If you have a laptop and a desktop that you wish to use from your bedroom, both addresses need to be registered with us. With special arrangements only one computer at a time may be connected. Please contact us if you want to share a network device, such as a printer, with your roommates.

Do you support email?
At this time Networking Enterprises only supports email through our Shared and Virtual Server packages.
Personal email is available at no charge from a number of sources such as Hotmail, and Yahoo, and by using your UNC userid and password through webmail.unc.edu. The userid and password is a UNC security requirement to protect its mail servers from offcampus misuse.

For more information, contact info@308West.Net

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