This page will contain information that will be hopefully helpful to the customers who transitioned over from Inter.net / PSInet / TIAC.

For now we'll include just a few simple questions and answers.

General Questions

Here are a few general questions related to the transition to ShellTown from another company.

What's my new e-mail address?

It should have changed from username@tiac.net to username@shelltown.net with username being the name you use to log on to the system.

What's my new web page URL?

It's being changed from http://www.tiac.net/users/username/ to http://www.shelltown.net/~username/ with again username being the name you use to log on to the system.

Where are my web files?

They are in the standard location, under the directory public_html in your home directory. The old (TIAC) location was non-standard.

Why is pine (or program x) different than it used to be?

Because we've upgraded it. We try to keep applications relatively modern. This is normally a good thing, but sometimes configuration files etc. change requiring a little work here and there.

What are my quotas?

Officially quotas are 60M for user space (including web space) and 10M for e-mail, overall a large increase over TIAC. We are not currently actively enforcing quotas, however, and probably won't so long as they are not abused. If it seems reasonable to increase these limits we will. Note that the 10M limit on e-mail isn't really that big a deal as we provide POP (with APOP safe authentication for those who want it) to automaticaly pull e-mail into user space.

How do I log onto ShellTown?

We still support telnet and ftp as Inter.net / PSInet / TIAC always did. However, we also support their more secure replacements ssh and scp and strongly urge all former Inter.net / PSInet / TIAC customers to change over to these newer, safer protocols for logging into any system, not just ShellTown.

I'm a former TIAC customer or employee and I'd like to share stories with other former TIAC customers and employees; can I do that here?

To some extent, but also be sure to see TIAC.org.

I'm a former TIAC customer or employee; are there any support groups?

See the previous question...

Billing Questions

Here are a few answers to frequent questions about billing.

I haven't been billed in a long time. What's up?

Check your e-mail; all invoices have been sent by e-mail to your ShellTown account (or possibly a different account listed in our database if you had submitted one). We've had some difficulty both in ironing out who's real and who's not and getting the credit card system streamlined but everything is in fairly good shape now.

My bill seems to be the wrong amount.

We've discovered that some of the numbers we've received from Inter.net are outright wrong. This (so far) has only affected people who originally had some sort of package deal with one of the above-mentioned companies. We're not trying to overcharge anyone; if your monthly rate seems bogus it possibly is, and we'll ensure that it gets fixed. Contact us at billing@shelltown.net by e-mail or (during normal business hours) by phone at 781-231-2621 and we'll see that it gets corrected.

I had prepaid for some months in advance and I don't see that prepayment reflected in my invoice.

Inter.net was supposed to have already reimbursed you for any payments / credits / etc. that covered periods after September, 2001. If you have not gotten credits made to your account (if you paid by credit card) or a check in the mail (if you paid by check) then Inter.net owes you some money and you should give them a call. If they give you any difficulty, please let us know.

I've never stopped paying Inter.net for my shell account.

They should have stopped charging you for the shell account in September. All shell payments after that should go to us. You should contact them and see that they stop billing you and send you a reimbursement.

What should I be paying now?

The same as you were paying before -- it is part of our agreement with Inter.net that the combined bills between both companies (for people with package deals) would not be going up. Inter.net should be reducing their bills to you enough to cover our bills to you. If you only had a shell account and not some sort of package, the bill from us should be exactly what you were paying Inter.net. We know we're received some bogus numbers; if there seems to be a problem with your bill, see the first question in this section.

I have another question related to billing...

Your question will (hopefully) be answered in the section on billing questions. If it isn't, of course please let us know.

If you know of something else to add here, please let us know and we'll add it.