What line speeds do subscribers get? Do they get a dedicated IP address? Can they operate servers?

These are all difficult questions. Ours is a coop, meaning that every cost we incur must necessarily come sooner or later out of the pockets of the subscribers. We are charged by our upstream provider according to our traffic levels. If a subscriber were to generate so much traffic that we had to pay an extra $250 per month to our provider, we would need to charge that $250 to that subscriber. There would be no other choice.

At first, we are going to throttle most of our subscriber connections down to 206K bps. Later, after we accumulate some experience and see what our traffic levels really turn out to be, we will consider raising the connection speeds.

It is extremely important to appreciate that 206K is actually quite good for our subscribers. Their only other choice is a painfully slow modem connection at 26K bps. It is also "always on" which is for some subscribers equal to or greater in importance than the particular speed level.

Yes, each subscriber will have a dedicated and fully routable IP address. The chief reason for this is accountability -- if someone were to make an accusation that spam or some illegal traffic emanated from our system, we want to be able to identify the source of the traffic down to its source. A routable IP address is also very important for some videoconferencing and game applications.

We will not, however, permit servers, at least not at first. We need to accumulate some experience with actual traffic levels and with our charges billed to us by our upstream provider. Any server that were to generate appreciable traffic would need to be paid for at a higher rate than the rate paid by other subscribers who merely check email and visit web sites.