Mon Oct 1 22:50:58 PDT 2001 — The .info registry is now online, and new registrations are being processed. This new name-space is likely to get crowded quickly, so if you’ve got a good name you are interested in, act quickly to secure it.
We’re seeing some occasional errors, but most registrations are going smoothly. If you receive an error, please wait a minute and try again. The URL for new registrations is:
sonic.sonic.net/members/domain_tool/
-Dane and Chuck
Mon Oct 1 16:32:23 PDT 2001 — Problems with new .info registrations. Due to the huge demand, the registry is having problems processing new registrations. They have closed the availability until they are able to smoothly process registrations so that everyone has an equal chance to get the .info domains that they want. We will keep you updated as we receive new information. -Dane and Chuck
Mon Oct 1 15:51:44 PDT 2001 — At 6:00am tomorrow, we will be taking our UUNet T3 offline briefly for a speed upgrade. During this time, our redundant Cable & Wireless T3 link will take on additional load and some Internet resources may respond more slowly than usual. The work is expected to take less than fifteen minutes. -Steve
Sun Sep 30 20:54:23 PDT 2001 — New .info domains should be available at 9:00 PM tonight. We’re offering two years free domain registration when you purchase multihomed hosting. For details, see:
sonic.sonic.net/members/domain_tool/
Update: Per the .info registrar, it appears that the opening of the .info name space has been delayed until 20:00 UTC on October 1st, or 1:00 PM Pacific time.
-Chuck and Dane
Fri Sep 28 15:08:10 PDT 2001 — We have implemented a new email anti-SPAM system and additional features to replace the rule-checking we were previously using.
The new features allow us to accept mail from our users who are accessing the net from other providers and, in the near future, to to provide SPAM blocking tailored to individual preferences.
The “POP before SMTP” (or “check before send”) feature allows sonic customers who are traveling or connecting from another ISP to send mail through Sonic.net after checking for new mail. Just check mail (at pop.sonic.net) using your Sonic.net account prior to sending mail (at mail.sonic.net).
The SPAM blocking system will allow users to select the level of SPAM blocking they desire, ranging from none to very strict blocking. Currently Sonic.net provides a moderate level blocking required to protect our customers, but individual control will give you much more flexibility.
Users who wish to opt out of the blocking entirely may do so by emailing support@sonic.net.
An interface will be provided soon to allow for user selectable levels of blocking, strict blocking, content blocking white-lists and black-lists and full opt-out. -Russ
Tue Sep 25 16:35:14 PDT 2001 — Night Operations: Tonight starting at midnight we will upgrading the OS of piggy, one of our load balancing switches. This upgrade will allow us to do URL content filtering on the Alteon’s providing us with tools to combat worms like CodeRed and Nimba. The upgrade is expected to take no more than 3 minutes and customers may not notice any downtime. -Matt, Steve, Dane and Kelsey
UPDATE: The upgrade is complete. Only load balanced services such as multihomed web sites, mail and pop were affected. No customers lost connectivity at any time.
Mon Sep 24 11:15:08 PDT 2001 — Our Domain Name Registration Tool will be taken offline for the following registry imposed maintenance window:
Date: Sunday, September 30, 2001 (GMT) Saturday, September 29, 2001 (EDT)
Time: 0100 hrs – 0500 hrs GMT 2100 hrs – 0100 hrs EDT
This maintenance window has been set by the gTLD registry operator, and will affect all ICANN accredited registrars equally.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. -Chuckc
Mon Sep 24 13:11:20 PDT 2001 — Our Santa Rosa dialup pool 522-1003 had experienced the dreaded ‘All Circuits Are Busy’ error. This was brief and was corrected by a reboot of one of our remote access servers. -Steve
Fri Sep 21 15:32:17 PDT 2001 — We are currently beta testing our new email filtering software. The new software enables our customers to opt in or out of each of our anti SPAM and virus filters. It will also support customer maintained white and blacklists and stronger content based filters to block adult email. Initially customers will only be able to turn off all email filtering but we hope to have finer controls enabled soon. The new software also enables POP before SMTP relay authentication which allows customers from off of our network to send mail through our outbound mail servers. If you have any questions please post them to news:sonic.net Ultra, one of the four load balanced mail servers, is running the new software now. Unfortunately, due to a small typo in the default SPAM filtering options, we applied ORBS DNS based black-listing to all mail that was received by ultra between 1:30pm and 2:40pm. We deeply regret this error due to the controversial nature of the ORBx lists and do not ever intend to enable any of them by default. -Russ, Kelsey and Dane
Thu Sep 20 11:33:43 PDT 2001 — Over the course of the next few days, we are going to be pro-actively looking for customer machines that have been affected by the Nimda worm. This will take the form of several port scans per day, and we will be contacting infected customers. — Eli, ScottR