Year: 2002

Tue Feb 5 08:29:19 PST 2002 — A circuit failure on 707-522-1003 caused the dreaded ‘All Circuits Are Busy’ message to raise its head this morning. A quick reboot of nas21.sonic.net brought back the circuit and all is well. We will be working with our hardware vendor to find a solution to these intermittent failures. -Steve

Tue Feb 5 18:54:53 PST 2002 — A second failure on 707-522-1003 briefly caused ‘All Circuits Are Busy’ messages again this evening. We are continuing to work with our hardware vendor to find a solution. -Russ

Tue Feb 5 03:03:03 PST 2002 — We have upgraded tsunami.sonic.net, the server which handles mailbox accounts, to a dual PIII 1. This should resolve the loading and delayed email deliver problems for mailbox accounts until mailbox accounts are migrated to the main load balanced server pool later this month. -Kelsey and Nathan.

Fri Feb 1 18:05:27 PST 2002 — Sonic.net posts first phase of SBC-ASI DSL pass through billings.

SBC-ASI (formerly Pacific Bell) has changed the billing relationship for DSL customers.

Where previously SBC-ASI charges for DSL services appeared on your telephone bill, Sonic.net will now begin passing through billing for these charges to your Sonic.net bill. The first of these charges have been applied to the accounts of Sonic.net customers who ordered DSL after the middle of October, 2001. ASI-SBC DSL charges will begin appearing on the remaining DSL accounts in the coming weeks.

Please note that Sonic.net must pay in full all amounts to SBC when we are presented with the consolidated bill, so your prompt payment is appreciated. Additionally, Sonic.net now bears bank and credit card processing and collections costs for handling these payments, which creates an additional burden for us of about $3 per customer. These costs will not be added to your fees, but will be absorbed by Sonic.net.

There are some positive elements included in these changes:

We do believe that having a single point of contact for all of your Internet billing is likely to mean easier resolution of DSL billing issues, as Sonic.net will be able to coordinate with SBC-ASI to resolve questions for you. This eliminates lengthy telephone calls to Pacific Bell billing, and could be a big time savings for you.

Additionally, if you are a home worker and are receiving reimbursement from your employer for home office expenses, having a single invoice from Sonic.net to present may simplify this for you.

A few other notes:

Currently, Sonic.net offers term discounts of 10% for yearly pre-payment of Internet service fees. However, since Sonic.net is simply passing through the SBC-ASI DSL charges we are billed for, no discounting can be applied to these fees. Sonic.net will post charges on a monthly basis for all SBC-ASI DSL fees. These charges will include monthly service fees, equipment charges for new installations and repair technician time as billed.

DSL customers must remain paid and in good standing, as delinquent accounts will still be billed to us by SBC-ASI. If your account becomes unreasonably delinquent, we may be forced to disconnect your DSL service. Please keep a current credit card on file with Sonic.net, or send check payments in promptly to avoid any problems.

We are working to make the most of this change, and to attempt to use the benefits to our mutual advantage. If you have any comments about the changes, please feel free to join discussions on:

news://news.sonic.net/sonic.dsl — Dane, Chuckc

Thu Jan 31 16:33:02 PST 2002 — We have put up a new POP in Santa Rosa to help with the busy signals on 522-1003. If you would like to help test this new capacity you can do so by changing your dialup number to 636-1001.

Sonic.net, Inc. is not responsible for any toll charges that may be incurred by calling (or configuring your computer to use) this number. If you are not certain that the number is a local (non-toll) call for you, check the phone book or dial 0 (zero) and ask for “Rate Information”.

If you could please send your results from using this new pop to support@sonic.net and in the subject line put ‘ATTN: Linuxnut RE: new POP’ we would greatly appreciate it.. Thanks. – Steve

Tue Jan 29 12:12:00 PST 2002 — Sonic.net is pleased to announce the availability of our newest broadband Internet access product, Rooftop. Sonic.net’s Rooftop service offers high speed broadband access using wireless technology from industry leader Nokia.

For full information or to place an order, please visit:

www.sonic.net/sales/rooftop/

The speed of Internet access available from Sonic.net’s Rooftop service is similar to DSL, from 384k-1.0Mbps. As with DSL, static IP addresses are provided and a total of five email boxes are included with the service. Of course, all of the usual Sonic.net services are also available, including our award winning technical support.

Rooftop service is reliable and secure, and can be installed quickly. We anticipate high demand for Rooftop service and installation will be on a first come, first served basis. We suggest you order as soon as possible to assure the quickest installation.

Initially, Rooftop service from Sonic.net will be available in Rohnert Park and in the Fountaingrove Southridge area of Santa Rosa. If you are located outside these areas, feel free to place an order to indicate your interest, and when we have availability in your area, we will let you know.

Tue Jan 29 15:27:45 PST 2002 — We have just upgraded the beta test version of SpamAssassin to the new release of 2.1. Version 2.1 has a number of improvements over 1.5 including auto whitelisting, much better tuning of scores and new rules. You can turn SpamAssassin on with the SpamCan tool in the membertools. For more information please see our local news group dedicated to spam filtering, news://news.sonic.net/sonic.antispam Please note that any customizations to your .spamassassin.cf have not been carried over into the new version. The configuration files have been moved, please see the news group for more information. -Kelsey

Mon Jan 28 19:54:14 PST 2002 — We’re experiencing some busy signals on our 1003 and 9811 dialup groups. We’ve got new dialups numbers ending in 9606 which can be swapped one for one with the 9811 numbers if you run into busy signals. Additional capacity in the 1003 group (actually serving 1001 and 1002) should be coming online tomorrow. -Dane

Mon Jan 28 14:06:14 PST 2002 — New virus in the wild: We’ve seen quite a bit of the new ‘Myparty’ virus pass through our servers early this morning and installed filters to catch it around 10:00AM. For more information please see www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.myparty@mm.html -Kelsey and Scott R.

Fri Jan 25 11:08:42 PST 2002 — We have added a new local news group to our news server, ‘sonic.announce’. The MOTD is now being posted there as well as on the shell servers, email list and on our website. We will also use this group to post other announcements regarding services, special offers or other bits of information that we’d like to pass on to our users. -Kelsey