Greetings,

You are being sent this e-mail as a producer of live content cybercast events over the Churches of God Cyber Auxiliary (CGCA) server. CGCA offers its services free of charge. We are supported by freewill contributions of churches and individuals that believe in the value of the services provided by CGCA. As a live content provider we think it is vital you are aware of the needs CGCA has to expand its server capacity and the factors involved in this decision.

As many of you probably know, the Churches of God Cyber Auxiliary’ (CGCA) server has been being utilized at full capacity during portions of the hours between 11:30 AM and 2:30 PM over the last several Sabbaths. Many who are attempting to access within this time frame are not able to make connection. At the peak usage seven different churches are cybercasting simultaneously with various numbers of listeners for each church tuning in for Sabbath services via the internet. The present server owned by CGCA can handle up to 60 simultaneous listener connections.

In order to meet the expanding usage demands on the services Churches of God Cyber Auxiliary has been able to provide to date, we must make some decisions. In making those decisions it has been helpful to consider who benefits from the live cybercast of Sabbath services and bible studies.

Feeding the Flock & Spreading the Gospel

Local church congregations currently serve four primary live cybercast audience targets for Sabbath church services, Bible studies and special events such as young adult and family gathering for bible studies and seminars, or the Feast of Tabernacles:

• Local congregation members who regularly or occasionally are unable to attend due to illness or other reasons. As the mean age of the church congregation members goes up the importance of this need will grow;
• Members from anywhere else in the world who occasionally or regularly are shut-in or want to hear additional messages on the Sabbath beyond what they get from their local congregation. This could include other local congregations. For example, at the Feast of Tabernacles in Kelowna, BC, Canada in 2001, a live video/audio cybercast was provided to a UCGIA group meeting in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada;
• Individuals not willing to attend or without a local congregation use the live cybercast for weekly Sabbath service or other live events;
• Internet surfers and researchers who find our sermon archives and live cybercast web sites through search engines or word of mouth. As an example, this week, the December 15, 2001 Sabbath service, was attended by a young man who’s first contact with the church resulted from searching the web and finding Spokane’s local church web site.

The expectation is, as more congregations are able to gain access to equipment and skilled volunteers they will begin to serve their shut-in members through live and archived cybercasts. As they serve their local congregation shut-ins, the other targeted audiences will automatically benefit. Three options have been suggested for dealing with current capacity limitations.

One idea proposed is to level the load by limiting the congregations that are allowed to cybercast to assigned time slots scheduled throughout the day. Another way of leveling the load is to have local congregations alternate on a biweekly schedule. Neither of these options are ideal. The primary consideration against alternating schedules or time slot adjustments is that Sabbath worship service and speaker schedules are normally set with the needs of the congregation in mind. As mentioned above the primary use and purpose of the cybercast is for those who are part of, but not able to attend congregation services. Varied schedules will likely be confusing and difficult for those with the highest cybercast priority. Others outside the local congregation also tend to tune into a certain congregation week after week for services. Limiting access for these listeners to only some of the services of a certain congregation will be frustrating and detract from the benefit of the cybercast.

In keeping the needs of cybercast listeners in mind the best option is expansion of current server cybercast capacity. This can be accomplished by purchasing an additional 60 stream Realnetworks Server Plus software license. We have another ISP (arranged through Dan Deininger’s company) that will allow us to install the server software onto their server. They will charge us for bandwidth usage which is expected to run about $100.00 per month. Realnetworks is offering us the server software with a one-year updates and service agreement at a 20% discount below their retail price. Our initial costs to add the additional 60 streams will be a little over $2,300.00.

Currently CGCA spends $190.00 per month, or $2,280.00 per year, for server co-location fees. The annual RealNetworks Server technical support agreement with RealNetworks runs about $798.00 per year. Co-location fees for 2002 could increase to $230 or $250 per month. In addition, local technical support varies from year to year. A reasonable estimate would range from $500 to $700 annually. CGCA is not charged extra for bandwidth use, therefore, any variable expenses are either non-existent or not material. This is the same server on which CGCA also hosts many other congregational web sites. Some of these are not cybercasting, but some such as Phoenix and Tucson do put up sermon archives.

Estimated direct fixed expenses for the existing CGCA server.

The most significant expense for the second 60 stream server is expected to be band-width usage charges. Currently we are estimating those expenses will run about $100.00 per month or $1,200.00 per year. The other regular direct annual expenses of maintaining the second server will be about the same as for the first server. We will still need to pay for annual upgrades and support to RealNetworks and possibly some additional maintenance costs. Maintenance costs for the second server are estimated to be negligible.

With the expansion to a second 60 stream server, CGCA’s annual budget for cybercast expense for 2002 will be about $7,127.00.

At present CGCA has enough cash to pay the first six months of co-location expenses for the existing server and other regular operating expenses. In order to keep our co-location expense to a minimum we pay for six months at a time. We also have enough to pay the RealNetworks server annual updates and service agreement for the existing server. We do not currently have enough cash to purchase and install the second server. In order to purchase the second 60 stream server we must receive contributions to cover our costs. Our immediate need is to raise a little over $2,300.00 in order to purchase the second 60 stream server.

Churches of God Cyber Auxiliary
P.O. Box 10044
Spokane, WA 99209-0044

Thank you, for taking the time to read this e-mail and for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Allen Hirst
Co-founder, Secretary/Treasurer
Churches of God Cyber Auxiliary