Arusha Node Marie: History

.....E-mail was first accessible in Arusha, prior to 1994, by calling a node in Nairobi or an Internet Service Provider in Europe or USA. It was at this time that several individuals, who accessed their E-mail in this way, got together and decided that it would be cheaper and more effective to establish an E-mail node in Arusha.
..... Right from the start the node was a group effort. The basic premise was to promote electronic communication and to make it available to everyone. It was this premise that was the founding principal of the Arusha Node Marie (ANM) Society. This principal still holds true, it now being enshrined in the society’s constitution. Unlike other, commercial, nodes ANM is guided by its members/owners in order to provide the service that they need.

2. ARUSHA NODE MARIE – WHO IS MARIE?

     You may be curious as to where the name 'Arusha Node Marie' came from. Well, the Arusha and Node parts are obvious. Marie is a part of the nodes’ history. Marie is Marie Benson, one of the founding 12 members of ANM (now retired and still active, with husband Stan, in St Peter, Minnesota).

     Marie is also a very organized person, and was for many years a reliable source of phone numbers, addresses and other hard to find information. She and Stan were retiring soon, and so were kind enough to "donate" their phone line to the foundling node so that it could call the Nairobi Node twice each day. Thus, since the great hope of this endeavor was that the node would become our future font of information, as Marie herself had been previously. . . well, the name Marie was thought to be particularly appropriate.

Marie Benson

You have to remember that in the mid-ninety's it was practically impossible to get a new telephone connection from TTCL. Marie Benson provided the connection that kick-started the ANM services that you all now enjoy.
In January, 2002, Stan and Marie returned to visit Arusha Node Marie. Here they are, below, standing with the staff:

3. FIDO AND THE FIRST CONNECTIONS

.....The first Arusha node was set up as a FIDO node. FIDO was the only e-mail protocol system available to ANM here in Arusha at the time. It was international, amateur and relatively inexpensive. The downside was that it was not Internet compatible and had to be converted. At the outset ANM called a node in Nairobi (named ELCI) which in turn collected all mail from a node called Green Net (GN) based in London. GN was linked into the 'Internet' and catered to us backwater types by converting from Internet to FIDO and vice versa.
..... This ‘relay’ system proved to be clumsy and slow so an arrangement was made with GN where E-mail was sent to ANM direct, twice a day, with GN calling ANM (polling) from London. This worked fine, better anyway, but the conversion to and from FIDO created some problems, such as mail getting lost. Additionally the connections were far from reliable because very poor quality lines and scheduled calls were often missed.
..... Then ANM were offered assistance by an individual working with the UN in Nairobi to have access to an Internet node in Nairobi that could also convert to FIDO. This node, Sasa, had a leased line (a telephone line permanently ‘online’) to Norway but there was a catch. As this was a UN line set up to be of assistance to ANM no commercial traffic was allowed to pass through this node. Sasa actually became quite the local hub and all local communication passing through it was free.

4. WOLFNET AND A CHANGE OF ADDRESS

..... Sasa gave us reasonable service but was plagued with other problems, which spurred ANM to find another provider that would be more reliable and professional. This provider materialised in the form of Wolfnet. At the same time ANM registered a domain name. This is a stage at which our membership all sat up and took notice, as it was at this point that we changed our address from “marie.sasa.unep.no” to our current address of “habari.co.tz”. All mail going to the old addresses was automatically forwarded to Wolfnet and then on to ANM until the new address became a fixture.
..... Wolfnet was, and still is, an established commercial UK provider based in London which was linked onto the Internet but, like GN, could also talk our FIDO language. They also polled us but did so more regularly than GN, reaching a maximum of 5 times a day. Changing to Wolfnet was a good move and our E-mail send/receive reliability improved considerably as a consequence. However, although we then enjoyed the superior services provided by Wolfnet, we were still barking away in the FIDO language, which was a real limitation to growth.
..... FIDO bit us in other ways too, as those of our members who regularly received file attachments could attest. A file attachment is any file added on to a normal E-mail message and with FIDO this created a real mess. FIDO actually handled file attachments with aplomb but only if they were short. If they got too big (i.e. graphics/photos) they were split into different files and it needed the intervention of us fallible humans to patch them back together again. Even if you knew what you are doing this could be a real pain. So, file attachments in FIDO were possible but you needed the patience of a saint and plenty of time to sort them out properly.
..... So, the pressure was on to get away from FIDO and join the Internet club. Joining the Internet cures the file attachment problem on E-mail's and a whole lot more. Firstly, what was involved in getting the Internet to ANM? Well, lets start by saying that ANM wanted to be able to offer its membership what they wanted. Something that worked, worked well, and was reliable and fast. That was what ANM set out to provide. This was in late 1997 and it was a testing time as the change over to full Internet accessibility was no easy task.

5. THE SWITCH TO FULL INTERNET ACCESS – FIDO DIES

..... At the outset ANM needed a leased line in order to ensure a fast and reliable direct link onto the Internet. This was achieved by leasing a Vsat line off Datel. This meant that in September 1997, for the first time, ANM communications came out of the computer in the AICC to a satellite dish on the roof, got bounced off a satellite and ended up getting snapped up by another satellite dish in France.
..... Initially, in order to reduce the costs of this expensive leased line, it was shared with others but this limited the speed of communications to 19.2 kilo bytes per second (KBPS). For those of you who prefer images, try to imagine that ANM rented the use of a large pipe to stuff their communications down. At the outset they were only able to use a portion of this pipe so the width of pipe available (bandwidth) was small. The aim was to build up the ANM membership to justify the leasing of the entire line hence allowing a quadrupling of the transmission speed. Mind you, the transmission speed of 19.2 KBPS at that time was perfectly acceptable and was not a major limiting factor although ANM hoped to be able to go to full bandwidth within a year of starting to use Vsat.
..... The next step was to purchase the necessary hardware, set it up, plug it in and configure it so that it was able to work and talk together. For this we needed expertise. We were extremely fortunate to have excellent expertise in the form of Erik Rowberg who was, and still is, our Sysop (Systems Operator). We asked a great deal of him in a very short time period and are probably responsible for any grey hairs he might have.
..... Erik wallowed in manuals and Internet protocols and also had to learn a new operating system (UNIX) in order to configure this new system for Internet capability. It was a tall order but Erik persevered and got the system up and running in record time. This meant that by January 1998 we had our own POP3 Internet Server and were running both the FIDO and direct Internet traffic in parallel. We had intended to maintain the FIDO system for those of our membership who preferred it as it had the advantage of dealing very well with noisy phone lines. However Wolfnet, who handled the FIDO traffic, requested to shut these services down which we did, with some regrets, in the middle of 1998.

6. UNWELCOME VISITORS – ANM IS HACKED

..... Ironically it was at these early stages of Internet connectivity, September 1998 to be precise, that we were hacked. Partly this was because of our inexperience; partly because we had not yet had time to set up thorough defences against hacking. The hacker came in, we think, as an anonymous ftp (file transfer protocol) user and caused considerable damage. Essentially we had to re-format and reload our server. The lesson was learnt, however, and we have now installed a ‘firewall’, which protects us against all but the most determined and persistent of hackers. We also check and update known software bugs regularly as well as keep thorough records of all illegal attempts to access the ANM servers.
..... It may come as some surprise to learn that people are trying to hack into the ANM system all the time and it is important for our members to realise our vulnerabilities. This has definite ramifications for those members with radio and cable Ethernet connections and we urge people with these permanently ‘on line’ connections to ensure that they have their own security measures in place.

7. FASTER AND FASTER

..... In 1998 one computer handled all ANM traffic. In 1999 the increased volumes were split through two computers. By the year 2000, four servers and one router were handling the traffic volume. ANM will continue to keep pace with both demand and new technologies by reinvesting membership subscriptions into state of the art hardware and software. In 1999, for example, ANM switched from a shared TDMA satellite dish (an old technology dish) hired from Datel and shared with other users, to a latest technology SCPC satellite dish, also from Datel.
..... ANM have exclusive use to the SCPS dish and our access speeds are dependent only upon the fee we pay to Datel. Whenever possible we increase this speed in order to provide our membership the best possible service which is, in turn, dependant upon the revenues generated by our members. In general, the more members we have, the greater our revenues and the better and faster the services we can provide. The annual fees for the leasing of the Datel satellite represented 50% of ANMs turnover, a figure of nearly $100,000 in the year 2000. In 2000 we increased our speed four times moving from 128 to 256 to 512 and then to 768 KBPS. This gave those members with direct cable or radio connections access speeds superior to those offered by the high speed ISDN connections (128/256 KBPS) offered in Europe and the United States.

8. ADVERSITY BREEDS SUCCESS

..... In 1999 one of the main bottlenecks to the majority of our membership in accessing the Internet continued to be the lack of availability, the extreme unreliability and the slow speed of the public telephone system. This was further exacerbated by the introduction by TTCL of the wireless loop telephone system for Arusha town and region in late 1999. The majority (80%) of our membership still relied on direct dial up through TTCL for their access to the node, a source of considerable member dissatisfaction and frustration. In response to member demand ANM started to look for ways to provide member access to the node that was not dependent upon the public telephone services.
..... This was done in two ways: direct wireless Ethernet connections and direct cable connections. In one short year ANM were able to offer Wireless Ethernet access in Arusha ranging from Ngaramtoni to Usa River using the latest radio technologies. By September 2000, 53 pioneering members had Wireless Ethernet access to the node and, despite a few teething problems, enjoyed a very high calibre of service. ANM was slower to establish extensive cable connectivity but this was addressed in late 2000 when a concerted effort was made to start providing Arusha town with cable access to ANM.

9. TEAMWORK

..... All the history of ANM as related above has been made possible by three main factors; AFAM, a dynamic management steering committee and our membership. AFAM is the management agency contracted by ANM to manage their Internet Service Provision and the society office. AFAM is a company employing ten staff, eight of whom work on ANM issues. The name most of our members will recognise and associate with ANM is Erik Rowberg, our sysop (Systems Operator). Many members are possibly of the mistaken impression that Erik is ANM! Erik is the director of AFAM and heads a team of dedicated people who provide you, our membership, with the services you enjoy today and every day.
..... The Management Steering Committee (MSC) of ANM is a group of six ANM members who are nominated and elected to their role at the society’s annual general meeting. Election to these posts is for a period of two years and MSC members make strategy and planning decisions for the direction of ANM on behalf of the entire membership. MSC meetings are held virtually every month, the committee members providing their services on an entirely voluntary basis. Although all MSC members go well out of their way to provide ANM and hence you, our membership, with a strong, dynamic society, there is a MSC member in particular who deserves special mention. His name is Thomas Mbise and he has been the chairman of MSC ever since ANM was formally established as a society. Thomas has often gone well beyond the call of duty to represent and fight for ANM as a society and as an Internet Service Provider (ISP). He has been a true ambassador for ANM and we are all very fortunate to have him representing us.
..... Our membership has been growing by leaps and bounds and in the year 2000 passed the 500 mark. Unfortunately many of our members are not actively engaged in the activities of the society as reflected by the 16% turnout for the 1999 annual general meeting. This is something the management steering committee would dearly like to change, as it is not always clear whether they are truly representing the wishes of their membership with the decisions they make on their behalf. One telling aspect of this apparent disconnect was highlighted with a request to ANM membership from the MSC for support to and guidance of the philanthropic activities of ANM in the year 2000. Feedback to this request was provided by less than 1% of our membership.

10. PUTTING SOMETHING BACK

..... Philanthropic activities represent a mechanism whereby ANM can differentiate itself from a commercial provider by putting something back into the Arusha society in which it operates. The nature of the society’s philanthropic feedback to Arusha has proven difficult to define and has, historically, been a mix-match of different projects rather than a specific and programmatic approach.
..... In the year 2000 the steering committee decided to take the bull by the horns and developed a formal approach for the philanthropic activities of ANM. A specific budget for philanthropic activities, representing **% of the ANM annual subscription income, was approved. This budget is used to support educational programmes only and is focussed on providing local educational institutions with free and unfettered access to the Internet.
..... The philanthropic activities continue to be managed and evaluated by the steering committee, the budget not being substantial enough to justify hiring a fund manager. If there are members out there who are interested in volunteering their time to assist in the implementation of the philanthropic activities of ANM we would be very interested in hearing from you.

11. SOME TRUMPET BLOWING

..... ANM is a Tanzanian product providing top quality services to the Arusha community equivalent, and often superior, to those given in developed countries such as the USA and European nations. ANM is a member owned organisation that responds to the needs of its membership and has done so without external financial support of any kind. ANM is a society that has a commitment to putting something back into the public society of which it is a part.
..... It is anticipated that ANM will continue to grow to meet the needs of its members. Quite where this will take us is difficult to predict. It has been a mere 6 years since the concept of ANM was floated and the changes to the services provided have been significant. Where we will be in six years from now? If you are not already a member, why don’t you sign up and join us for the ride.

Website prepared by James C. Bangsund
on behalf of the Arusha Node Marie Management Steering Committee.
Latest revision: February 20, 2010