REELRADIO Update

In late August 2001, REELRADIO finances were in excellent condition and we had the opportunity to purchase a VA Linux 1000 server. The server manufacturing division of VA Linux had gone belly up, and the machine was under $800. This particular server had two 750Mhz processors (just like moondog, with just as much memory.) We did add another SCSI hard drive, but even after that, the total price was about a third of moondog’s price. (What a difference 15 months makes!) Our plan is to use this machine as an emergency backup for REELRADIO, in addition to offering no-cost hosting services to other non-profit, radio-oriented sites that share our goals and become contributing participants to the REELRADIO project.

[Description by Uncle Ricky]

The events covered by this video took over 5 hours in real time, much longer to edit, and total just over six minutes here. It shows a bit of the two hour drive from Sacramento, California, to visit our servers at Hurricane Electric in Fremont, California.

We set out on Sunday, November 4, 2001, just before noon. System Administrator Barry Brown was at the wheel, I rode shotgun, and Barry’s wife Dawn was in the backseat. I did the mobile shots, and Dawn took over once we reached HE.NET.

This video is intended to give our contributors some idea of what a big Internet colocation facility really looks like, and perhaps explain why it costs so much to operate a first-class web site. Hurricane Electric (HE) hosts an untold number of sites at this facility, and it is only *one* of their facilities. HE peers directly with over 200 Internet providers and is one hop from Mae West, the west coast Internet switching center

In addition to an expansive view of HE.NET facilities, you’ll see REELRADIO’s little piece of the action where moondog resides and wolfman was installed and officially named. Some explanation is appropriate regarding some other things that you will see: Barry pre-configured wolfman in Sacramento so no configuration was necessary when we got to Fremont. We pretty much put it in the rack, hooked it up, turned it on, and checked to see if it was awake.

The third machine operating in the reelradio space is mongo.ibexa.com. This is Barry’s machine, and I’m happy to provide space and connectivity for it. It monitors bandwidth usage by wolfman, moondog and itself, and it uses very little bandwidth. REELRADIO is pleased to provide a place for mongo and it helps make Barry a happy System Administrator.