Author: admin

Mon Apr 9 19:02:54 PDT 2001 — We’re currently seeing some instability in Cable & Wireless’s network or in our link to them. While our UUNet T3 is bearing the additional load, we’re seeing some sluggish performance to some sites or intermittent un-reachability due to the time required for route convergence. We’re working with C&W to isolate the trouble now. -Dane and Russ

Thu Apr 5 16:38:39 PDT 2001 — Sonic.net was featured in today’s Press Democrat story about Northpoint’s shutdown of their DSL network. Sonic.net does not partner with Northpoint, a DSL provider who’s bankruptcy has turned into a nightmare for their connected customers. We’ve been able to step in and provide quick access solutions to end-users stranded without access by Northpoint’s sudden demise. For the full story, see:

216.167.95.20/business/news/05dsl_e1.html

Wed Apr 4 17:40:52 PDT 2001 — Sonic.net is offering free DSL equipment while supplies last! Pacific Bell today increased the price of DSL equipment to $253, up from $199. In response to this, Sonic.net has obtained 130 DSL modems, and we’re going to give them away to the next 130 viable orders for DSL service that we receive. This is first come, first served, so if you’ve been considering moving to DSL service, now is the time to do it! We expect that we will run out of these units very fast, so order quickly. The order form and sales page now have a count-down object which will show you how many units are left; look for the number of units still available in red.

www.sonic.net/sales/dsl/pacbell/

Note that equipment is not reserved until the order form has been submitted completely. If you visit and find that there are units available, please fill the form quickly to avoid someone else getting them before you! There are only 130 units, and it’s strictly first come, first served, once they’re gone, they’re gone. -Dane, David, JenD, Lori, Jen and Steve

Update – as of now, Mon Apr 9 17:23:17 PDT 2001, there are 44 units left. If you’re interested in getting the free DSL equipment, place your order quickly. -Dane

Mon Apr 2 11:27:14 PDT 2001 — On Wednesday April 11th, sometime between midnight and 3:00AM PST, Cable & Wireless will be doing maintenance configuration changes on our T3 to them. Expected downtime is about ten minutes, and our UUNet T3 will take on the traffic while the C&W link is down. You may notice slightly slower performance while this work is being done. -Dane

Sun Apr 1 19:15:32 PDT 2001 — We were experiencing ‘Error 629’ messages when people were dialing our 522-1003 dialup pool. The dialup gear on the front side of this hunt group was locked up. After a quick reboot the problem went away. – Steve

Fri Mar 30 22:07:02 PST 2001 — The Redback router we use to serve Pacific Bell ADSL and Broadlink WDSL customers had to be rebooted this evening, as it seemed to be behaving inconsistently. As it turned out, the RedBack was not at fault. Total downtime for customers was about three minutes or less. – Eli

Thu Mar 29 12:12:51 PST 2001 — CW and UUNet T3’s. In addition to our recent increase in bandwidth on our UUNet T3, we have increased our available bandwidth on our Cable & Wireless T3. We ordered these increases to meet customer demand for more bandwidth; additionally, Usenet feeds are consuming quite a bit of bandwidth despite our satellite feed.

The entire “bandwidth equation” is under review here at Sonic.net. We have initiated a bandwidth profiling project, and are exploring new ways to bring content to Sonic.net members without using the expensive Internet backbone links. -The Sonic Operations Team

Thu Mar 29 11:48:56 PST 2001 — Mistral upgraded. Yesterday, we upgraded one web server in our cluster to a dual PIII-750 with half a Gigabyte of RAM. Mistral used to be a single PIII-550 with a quarter Gigabyte of RAM. (Thanks Kelsey.) Our web server cluster serves over 5.1 million hits a day — and during peak periods, hits-per-second can exceed 115. We have these statistics, and more, available via graphs; Nathan and Kelsey are working to make those graphs public within the next week. -The Sonic Operations Team

Wed Mar 28 10:02:42 PST 2001 — bolt.sonic.net net, our linux shell server stopped talking to our mail server lastnight. This resulted in some e-mail being delayed that was sent via the shell. This did not affect dialup users e-mail, only e-mail that was sent via bolt. -Steve, Nathan

Thu Mar 22 21:51:58 PST 2001 — Ape, or core Extreme Networks Switch, failed tonight at 20:26:47. It’s snmpd process got stuck in a software loop and maxed out the management modules’ CPU and routing engine. We rebooted the switch just after 21:00 which cleared up the problem and restored all services. While the switch was in failure mode it’s routing engine was unresponsive which primarily affected our colocated customers. It may have also sporadically failed to properly forward normal switch traffic during this period as well which would have resulted in network reachability errors.

We identified the trigger for the bug in the switch’s software and stopped probing that SNMP OID and have already submitted a bug report to Extreme Networks. -Kelsey, Scott and Eli.