To get an account on agora, call 503-972-0365 with a regular terminal communications program, telnet to agora.rdrop.com, and login as "apply", or, most likely these days, go to https://www.rdrop.com/cgi-bin/apply-cgi. Note that agora is a single person operation, and I have a day job --- expect service levels accordingly. I will try to answer what questions and help as I can, however. Agora's fee structure is as follows: Wader: $5/month 7 hours/month (15 minutes/day average w/SLIP/PPP access, includes standard terminal access) Surfer: $10/month 30 hours/month (1 hour/day average w/SLIP/PPP access, includes standard terminal access) CyberNaut: $15/month 180 hours/month (6 hours/day average w/SLIP/PPP access, includes standard terminal access) You may pay in bulk for a discount: 1 year = 11 * monthly rate Disk space is $1/megabyte of quota. That is, for each megabyte you want available for your use, you pay $1, and then that megabyte is available for as long as you have your account. It is a one-time fee, not a monthly fee. The default amount given to new accounts is 1 Meg. PLEASE NOTE the section below on filling out checks... Users may publish web pages at no extra charge, even for business purposes, provided traffic does not become a load issue. They are included in your disk space however. For most people, this is not a problem; web traffic is a very light application. The way account payments work is this: when your account is created, it gets set with an expiration date roughly a month later. If no further payments are received, the account will not let you login after that date. When payments are received, the expiration date is reset according to the amount received. The system will also start warning you two weeks before your account is due to expire. When it does expire, you will get a message indicating that it has done so, and you will not be able to login. It will not be removed, however, until it has been expired for over a month. At that time, it will be archived and removed, and there will be a $5 charge to restore it (this charge only applies if the account has been archived, to cover the time it takes to get the files off the archive tape). The recommended payment method is via the Pricing/Payments link (http://www.rdrop.com/agora/payments.html), as that is processed completely automatically. You can subscribe there for automatic payments as well. Checks need to be made out to "RainDrop Laboratories", and not to me personally. Also, be sure to note your account name on the check in the memo area and how the money is to be allocated; the following are examples of how this might be done: jblow wader $5 1meg $1 maestro surfer $10 packrat 2meg $2 richguy cyber $165 20meg $20 In these examples, user "jblow" has sent $6: $5 for a month of Wader access (7 hrs/month) and $1 for an additional megabyte of disk space. User "maestro" has sent $10 for an additional month of Surfer User access (30 hrs/month). User "packrat" only needs some additional disk space at this time, but user "richguy" is paying $185 up front for an entire year of Cybernaut User access, as well as 20 megabytes of disk space. It helps a LOT if the amounts actually divide evenly and add up to the total --- you'd be surprised how often they don't... Making out the checks this way makes processing the checks *much* easier. It is not necessary to include any additional notes with the check, and if there are questions, I'd prefer to receive them via email anyhow. No point in killing more trees, and it's easier and quicker to respond to email questions. New users are placed in a restricted menu-based shell until they send a copy of some proof of identity. The address and other details are in the main help entry, as well as being included below. Once ID has been sent in, the menu shell will be unrestricted. After this occurs, users can request one of the regular Unix shells and/or SLIP/PPP access. Note that this is independent of payment, although the most convenient way to provide proof of identity is to send in a pre-printed check. This is not required, however, and if you want to have full access during the free trial period, just send in a copy of a drivers license or bill addressed to you (feel free to remove or cover the billing information, all I care about is your name). Checks and proof of identity should be sent to: RainDrop Laboratories 1770 NW Alta Vista Dr. Corvallis, OR 97330 One last note: new users are required to read the security policy (as well as others in the Policy section), and in particular should note that spamming is considered harassment and is grounds for immediate account termination.