Wed Apr 28 12:11:38 PDT 1999 — Sonic.net is now offering free outgoing FAX service to Santa Rosa and surrounding areas including Sebastopol, Rohnert Park, Windsor, Forestville and parts of Petaluma. If you’d like to send a FAX, visit our FAX page at www.sonic.net/fax/ for information.

You can FAX via email, or use client software to integrate with a scanner or other software. Use this gateway to FAX to businesses and individuals throughout the coverage area without being forced to go offline to free up a phone line for your FAX machine or FAX modem. Add email to FAX addresses to your address book so that you can send to groups of people, some of whom have email, and some who have only FAX, and all of them can receive the same group message by sending just one email.

Additionally, if you’d like to have a special direct-to-FAX email address, eg faxusername@sonic.net which forwards directly to your FAX machine, email support@sonic.net with your FAX number and the address you’d like and we’ll set it up. You could use this easy to remember address if you’d like instant delivery of orders or other correspondence without being online. If you elect to do this, be sure to avoid getting this address on any spam lists! =)

There is also a service for free inbound FAXing, so if you’d like to completely toss your FAX machine out, check out www.efax.com/. Kudos to Steve Johnson for setting up Sonic.net’s new FAX gateway. -Dane

www.sonic.net/fax/

Wed Apr 28 12:09:55 PDT 1999 — Our multihome web server ran short on file descriptors last night at around 12:30am. We made some changes and did a couple reboots to try different kernels, so multihomed sites had a couple brief outages between 12:30am and 1:30am last night. -Dane and Scott

Mon Apr 26 04:00:00 PDT 1999 — We’ve upgraded our news server, Ultra. The upgrade includes a new driver for the DPT RAID hard drive controller, SMP support (dual processors), and improved networking. -Scott

Sun Apr 25 15:25:14 PDT 1999 — Above.net, our co-location provider for the xxx-xxx-3610 numbers, is in the midst of a network outage. Thankfully, we have alternate numbers for that area, which can be located at www.sonic.net/cgi-bin/pops.pl, or by calling Support at 707-547-3400. Above.net has no ETR, so the number change should be considered permanent. – Eli

Sat Apr 24 12:51:21 PDT 1999 — PacWest, the phone company serving the xxx-0174 numbers will be doing a switch upgrade cutover on Sunday morning at 2:40AM. They expect downtime from 15-90 minutes for these numbers. For all customers served by these lines, we’ve got alternative numbers available, so please make note of them. We’d suggest using our POP finder to get a list of local access numbers for your location, and keep that on paper for cases like this. You can find the POP tool at:

www.sonic.net/cgi-bin/pops.pl

If you haven’t changed your dialup number recently, it’s likely that we’ve got new recommended numbers for you which may perform faster than the number you’re using now. This is particularly true for customers dialing the xxx-0174 numbers, but it does apply to all customers. Do review the POP tool and note the numbers available for your area and give each of them a test run for speed. -Dane

Sat Apr 24 22:47:28 PDT 1999 — Our news server disk drive filled this morning, and the monitoring software which is supposed to tell us had been halted and not restarted recently. I’ve cleared the disk space, and news is flowing in fast right now, but it’ll take a few hours for the backlog to clear up. Sorry for this oversight!

Additionally, to avoid the troubles that we’ve been having the past few weeks with the server filling, I’ve removed the group alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 which was filling with about five gigs per day of pirated music. -Dane

Fri Apr 23 10:10:15 PDT 1999 — It’s spring cleaning time for Sonic.net, and we’d like to ask all of our users to take a look at their disk usage and see if you’ve got any old files laying around on our servers that you can delete. You can find out your disk usage by using the ‘diskuse’ command at the shell, or at the following web page:

www.sonic.net/tools/

Thanks for tidying up! -Dane

Fri Apr 23 10:07:05 PDT 1999 — We had trouble briefly this AM with the equipment which serves the xxx-9811 numbers. The gear wasn’t answering, and had to be rebooted. All’s well now, but we don’t have a diffinitive reason for the failure at this time. -Dane and Steve.

Sun Apr 18 13:00:52 PDT 1999 – In working with Pacific Bell to troubleshoot one of our PRI’s in Sebastopol (823-8812), I had to reboot all the equipment remotely. This caused disconnects, and an inability to log in for a few minutes. Sorry for the bump! -Eli

Tue Apr 13 11:39:38 PDT 1999 — Update the MOTD entry above – the new Focal numbers are in the POP finder at www.sonic.net/cgi-bin/pops.pl Of course, Sonic.net is not responsible for long distance telephone charges. Check with your operator to make sure that any number you use is local!

We would recommend that all customers use the POP finder at the URL above and make note of all of the numbers which are available for their use. We suggest you store the list on paper or on your local system so that you can refer to it in case of troubles with the number you regularly use.

Different numbers may yield different connection speeds due to line and equipment differences. Please try each number which is available for your location and use the one which gives you the fastest speed. Many customers are able to almost double their speed by doing this testing, so we certainly encourage it!

Again, remember that Sonic.net is not responsible for long distance telephone charges. Check with your operator to make sure that any number you select to use is local. -Dane