Author: admin

Sat Dec 1 17:44:31 PST 2001 — In a move that peripherally affects Sonic.net customers, Excite@Home cut off Internet access for AT&T Broadband cable modem customers on Saturday morning at about 2:15AM. With about 850,000 end-users affected, this is a major impact for broadband end-users. Included in these are cable modem customers in Petaluma and Windsor.

Here at Sonic.net, we’ve noticed a large decline in the amount of outgoing traffic, as @Home was one of the largest single consumers of content from sites hosted here. If you have your own website here, you may notice less traffic.

We have also had some user calls regarding websites which were hosted by @Home customers on their cable modem connections (side note – this isn’t allowed by the AT&T terms of service) which are now offline.

To check if a site that you cannot reach is on the @Home network, use our Ping/Traceroute/MTR tools at www.sonic.net/stats/. If the address is behind a router at “home.com”, and is unreachable, it’s likely that it is an AT&T cable modem customer who has been cut off.

AT&T has told customers that they can expect to be without service for “a few weeks” (CNet). Sonic.net has received DSL orders from some AT&T customers to replace their cable modem service, and we’re glad to be bringing these customers back online with us directly! -Dane

Wed Nov 28 10:30:07 PST 2001 — Hardware failure on the 522-1003 dialup group caused some intermittent busy signals. We have isolated the hardware and are in the process of replacing it. -Steve

Wed Nov 28 16:23:08 PST 2001 — One of our HyPer DSP cards in the XXX-9811 was configured incorrectly. After analyzing our connection logs and and seeing excessive 14.4kbps connections, we were able to locate the card and re-program it to behave more appropriately. -Steve and Russ

Mon Nov 19 17:24:09 PST 2001 — We have upgraded our mail servers to a new kernel (version 2.4.14) and are now running Network File System Version 3 (NFSv3). This should resolve the occasional corruption of mail boxes and increase overall system performance. -Russ and Kelsey

Sat Nov 17 00:43:25 PST 2001 — Night Operations Complete. Ape rebooted successfully without a hitch. Total downtime was less than 2 minutes. We also reinstalled the secondary MSM to restore the switch’s internal redundancy. -Kelsey and Matt

Fri Nov 16 12:14:24 PST 2001 — Newbolt maintenance. At Noon we booted Newbolt in single-user mode to move some filesystems around. Maintenance went smoothly, and Newbolt is back online. -Scott

Fri Nov 16 11:20:35 PST 2001 — Newbolt maintenance. At Noon (that is, in about 40 minutes), Newbolt will be shut down for some quick maintenance of its filesystems. Downtime will be about 15 minutes. We apologize for any inconvenience. -Scott

Fri Nov 16 20:07:37 PST 2001 — Night Operations: We need to reboot one of our core switches due to the fact that one of it’s internal processes has gone offline. The process doesn’t affect normal operations, only our ability to manage the switch. We are going to reboot it shortly after Midnight, tonight, total downtime shouldn’t exceed more than 5 minutes. We are also going to take the opportunity to restore its secondary management module. -Kelsey and Matt

Fri Nov 16 15:02:42 PST 2001 — We’ve got two webcams in our datacenter that you can now view. An Axis Neteye camera is pointed at a section of the colocation space, and a ComCam streaming camera is pointed toward the Cobalt colocations and the entry area.

The ComCam requires download and installation of viewing software, which supports viewing of up to six cameras in various locations at a time. It’s worth installing, there are test cameras in Hong Kong, Tokyo and other locations that you can take a look at in addition to our own.

www.sonic.net/datacentercam/

There are some limits on the number of simultaneous viewers of each of these cameras, so please do not leave your unattended system viewing the refreshing images. Thanks!

-Steve and Dane

Wed Nov 14 11:56:18 PST 2001 — New httpd executable online. After extensive testing on Thunder port 81, We have upgraded our web servers to support php4. Please let use know if anyone has trouble with web pages. Thanks. -Scott