Author: admin

Our FTP server was impacted by a large number

Thu May 22 09:53:55 PDT 1997 — Our FTP server was impacted by a large number of off-site users downloading a pirated registered version of Duke Nukem 3D. Please don’t distribute pirated software from our FTP server! For a few hours this morning local users were unable to login and upload web pages, etc. Note that if you have trouble at ftp.sonic.net, you can also connect via ftp to shell.sonic.net. -Dane

As you may have heard, Windows systems have a

Tue May 20 10:17:31 PDT 1997 — As you may have heard, Windows systems have a networking bug which may allow a remote system or user to crash your desktop system while you are connected to the Internet. To avoid this, Sonic has implemented filters in our routers which block this type of attack. For more information and for fixes for your system, see mydesktop.com/ or news:sonic.help

In our continuing efforts to cut down on…

Tue May 20 14:07:11 PDT 1997 — In our continuing efforts to cut down on unsolicited commercial email and SPAM, we have implemented domain name verification on inbound mail. This means that we’ll no longer get mail from make@money.fast, no@reply.here and other such bogus domains. Post to the newsgroup news:sonic.net if you have any questions about the implementation of this. -Dane

We had some stuck talk daemon processes and…

Thu May 8 11:09:08 PDT 1997 — We had some stuck talk daemon processes and decided to reboot the shell server to get rid of them. The server was offline for about 3 minutes. Also – folks, please don’t run persistant processes like ‘eggdrop’ and other bots and daemons.

Important: As the next step in our attempt to

Thu May 8 01:11:37 PDT 1997 — Important: As the next step in our attempt to stamp out SPAM and UCA mail, I’ve implemented filters which restrict our dialup users from using off site SMTP (mail) relays. As all dialup customers should be using ‘mail.sonic.net’ as their SMTP relay, this should not affect you, however if your email client software is misconfigured to use someone else’s mail relay, you’ll need to change your settings. The goal is to avoid making Sonic an attractive place to SPAM from – by requiring users to use our relay, we can avoid remote relay abuse. If you have any questions about this, please do post to news:sonic.help and let us know.

For more information about SMTP and POP, please see: www.sonic.net/info/relay/

Two of our terminal servers had some problems

Wed May 7 23:12:54 PDT 1997 — Two of our terminal servers had some problems with very high network load – seems that someone at the University of Delaware doesn’t like us. We also had a seemingly unrelated problem with our mail server which forced us to reboot it. Mail services were unavailable for about 15 minutes. Nothing like a little excitement, egh? -Dane

The main ISDN Portmaster has had some ongoing

Sat Apr 26 17:52:27 PDT 1997 — The main ISDN Portmaster has had some ongoing intermittant problems, and I’ve just upgraded the operating system to fix the documented bugs. The 3.3.2 operating system has been replaced with 3.5, and there’s a large list of bugs that they’ve squashed. Sorry for the poor, intermittant performance, particularly this AM. -Dane

UUNet, Sprintlink, MCI and other major…

Fri Apr 25 10:06:37 PDT 1997 — UUNet, Sprintlink, MCI and other major backbone carriers had massive routing instability which affected us. Basicly, a Sprintlink customer was announcing that they were the first class C of every classless (CIDR) block on the Internet, and UUNet and others were listening to them. This customer says that it was actually one of their downstream customers, and that they’ve taken that customer and their routers offline. They’ve blamed a bug is their main Bay Networks router for a bug in it’s announcement filtering. Eventually, routes converged, and the network stabilized. -Dane and Scott

UUNet is having massive routing problems…

Fri Apr 25 09:28:35 PDT 1997 — UUNet is having massive routing problems ‘nationwide’ which are affecting us. It seems that a Sprintlink customer is announcing that they are us, and UUNet and others are listening to them instead of us. We’re working on this now.