Month: October 2001

Wed Oct 17 13:33:42 PDT 2001 — PHP4 server up for testing. We are running a new web server executable on thunder.sonic.net:81 (port 81). We would appreciate it if experienced web developers would test the heck out of it and report their results in news:sonic.net. Most especially, folks running php3 sites should test them on the new server if possible.

Unfortunately, we can’t at the moment try the server at yourdomain.com:81, as the load balancing switch doesn’t understand what to do with requests to port 81. (Hopefully we will have that capability shortly.) -Scott

Tue Oct 16 11:19:53 PDT 2001 — There was a short BroadLink outage in the southern Santa Rosa area, this outage lasted approximately 30 minutes while the BroadLink techs replaced a faulty power supply. -Steve

Mon Oct 15 16:15:03 PDT 2001 — Special offer for domain registration transfers: $15 for transfer and a year’s service.

Sonic.net is now offering domain name registration transfers as well as new registration services. By using Sonic.net’s registration services, you will have a single point of contact for customer service. We also offer much better prices than from the old “Network Solutions” monopoly registration services.

If you have an existing domain, we are offering a great deal for domain transfers. No matter when in the future your domain expires, we would like you to transfer it now to Sonic.net for only $15, which includes an additional year of registration services. For example, if you have a domain with Network Solutions or another registrar that expires a year from now, move it now to Sonic.net for only $15 and get an additional year. This is substantial savings over the $25-$35 yearly renewal rate from Network Solutions.

We are also offering free transfers or free registration for any new multihomed website. If you have been considering multihoming, this offer could save you from $15 to $50.

For more information and to transfer or register domain names, visit the domain tool at:

sonic.sonic.net/members/domain_tool/

Sun Oct 14 15:07:49 PDT 2001 — We’ve seen a number of problem reports regarding the site ‘abebooks.com’. This site is not hosted here and has no affiliation with Sonic.net, but appears to be very popular! Apparently the ‘abebooks.com’ site admins did a recent DNS (domain name service) change to a new provider, and their previous ISP never removed their old DNS zone configuration file. This caused our name servers to continue to ‘believe’ the old name servers as authoritative, and retain the old information.

We’ve engineered a workaround for our customers, but this serves as an important reminder: If you move a domain, always tell your previous ISP about the change! -Eli, Chris, Kavan, Russ

Tue Oct 9 16:19:44 PDT 2001 — Some Pacific Bell ADSL customers in the Santa Rosa area are experiencing an outage this afternoon. Pacific Bell has not been very clear in explaining the outage, but it appears to affect only some Remote Terminal ‘Pronto’ customers on the Santa Rosa 157 OCD. We will advise with more details and an ETR as soon as Pacific Bell is forthcoming with some details.

Update: As of Friday, this trouble seems to have been cleared by Pacific Bell. -Eli, David

Mon Oct 8 18:13:36 PDT 2001 — With valuable consulting help from BroadLink, Sonic.net has completed deployment of our Santa Rosa downtown wireless roaming service. Now, you can use a laptop with a standard wireless PC Card to access the Internet via Sonic.net at high speed. The service works in restaurants and coffee shops around Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa, and is free for Sonic.net customers.

For more information, visit waves.sonic.net/.

-Matt and Dane

Fri Oct 5 11:45:19 PDT 2001 — When we upgraded our mail server software on bolt (shell) we introduced a bug that caused a small percentage of mail sent from bolt to get stuck in the queue.

We have replaced the mail server software with a new version and processed the old messages. Most were delivered, those that were undeliverable were returned to the sender.

In order to avoid this in the future we are implementing a warning system that will notify our OPS team in the event of excessively old messages or an excessive number of un-delivered messages in the queue.

We apologize for the inconvenience. -Russ

Thu Oct 4 20:55:14 PDT 2001 — Local mail and local web hosting down. This evening, our load-balancing switch died catastrophically — we had to go down and move all the cables from kermit to piggy, the backup hardware. The spare switch seems to be working fine. The only difference between the switches is the OS revision, which is newer on kermit, the switch that failed. We apologize for the inconvenience. -Scott, Kelsey, Dane, and Eli

Tue Oct 2 10:35:25 PDT 2001 — New .info registrations delayed. When the new .info top level domain (TLD) opened up at 1:00PM Pacific on October 1st, the traffic at the registrar was tremendous. So many people were trying to register new .info domains that they were forced to pull the plug due to system instability.

The .info registry should be starting up again soon, but we do not have a schedule at this time. As soon as they are back online, our tools will automatically begin taking new registrations. We will be updating the MOTD as we receive additional information.

Standard domain registrations (.com, .net & .org) have not been affected, and our October promotion offering two years free domain registration (a $50 value) is still available on these domains.

Update: OpenSRS and Afilias have projected that the registry _may_ re-open at 6:00PM Pacific today, October 2nd.

We apologize for the delay! -Chuck and the Sonic.net staff

Tue Oct 2 06:33:36 PDT 2001 — The UUNet T3 upgrade went smoothly this morning. We are now running at a full 45 megabits on our link to UUNet. -Steve