Jimmy... Yes Dad? Jimmy, I've got some bad news... What is it, Dad?

Lately we have been maxing out our our T1 Connection to the internet. Because of this, when we had a lot of RealAudio feeds going, the connection couldn't keep up, so the sound was breaking up and sounding really uncool for all of the feeds. Most of our recent increase in traffic has been from ftp downloads of files - over 50 at a time sometimes, and those downloads took FOREVER to happen. Also, we've been adding a lot more 16k stereo and other higher bandwidth sets, which take up to 5 times as much bandwidth to listen to/download. As a result, we recently had to implement some bandwidth limits on the real-time server and ftp downloads.

Since the main purpose of SugarMegs is to share the music, so that as many people as possible can check out the shows, we're going to stop offering 16k pnm listening sessions, and only offer the 5k stuff live. We get 5 28.8k (5khz) mono connections for each 1 16k stereo (Dual ISDN stereo, 16 kHz) that we don't have going, so this way lots of people can listen to cool new shows and hopefully not have tons of net.congestion static.

Because 16k sets are pretty much tapeable, and if you're copying a tape, you don't want static from network congestion, we figure that people mostly want to ftp download the 16k files to play locally from disk (they sound better from disk even if you're not taping). We've gotten a few offers for ftp mirror sites and are going to try to make all of the 16k stereo stuff available to download from them. The first mirror offer is Mark Kirschenbaum's 16k Phish morror, so if you're looking to download some 16k phish, go there, he's got all of it mirrored, and downloads will hopefully be faster than from eyes. If you have the resources and would like to mirror some of these files for ftp downloads and/or http real time access, please let me know.

We will be limiting ftp connections to eyes during prime internet hours (10:00 AM EST to 11:30 PM EST Mon-Fri) to only 10. 20 ftp connections are available at other times, check the mirror sites when you get shut out.

For Show Uploads we will probably open a separate uploads only account that bypasses the 10/20 user limit to send us shows. Email us first if you have a show that you want to upload.

We should be able to keep up with our maximum 60 pnm feeds if most of the ftp comes from the mirror sites.

Peter (that's it) and Pete (the other one) have been hanging out lately on irc channel #sugarmegs, if you've got comments look for us there.

Thanks for all of the uploads, and all the other user feedback. We hope this solves the bandwidth thing and makes everybody happy!

Peter (that's it) and Pete (the other one)