Midcoast Internet Solutions

System
News & Notices

January 2003

• January 31, 2003 4:30pm. Liberty's 589-3003 number had trouble late this afternoon. I went and replaced the modem server there to reduce the chances of that happening again. The new modem server has a STAC compression module in it which can improve performance. To utilize STAC in Windows, go into the properties of your dialup networking icon, go to Server Types then check Enable Software Compression. Follow the URL above for more information about STAC compression. Also we have quietly upgraded most of 15006997201 for STAC. Other ares such as Union, Washington, and Damariscotta will receive STAC over the next couple of months.
• January 31, 2003 2:30pm. Surfing speed should be improved now, and may improve a little more over the next couple of days. Two new T1s to the internet were installed and are providing the needed performance.
• January 29, 2003 11:50pm. The server for midcoast.com will be down for about 5 minutes to change a hard drive in the redundant drive array.
• January 28, 2003 This morning people in Union and people using the Benner Hill wireless have had internet problems. This is due to equipment problems in the link between Benner Hill and our Rockland datacenter. Our staff has been working all morning to replace the equipment and we hope to have it working properly sometime this afternoon.
• January 27, 2003 9:30-11:15am. Most everybody had an internet outage today. This was due to a customer's server being infected with the recent and nasty Microsoft SQL worm. MIS does not run Microsoft servers and we have unplugged the customer who's computer had the worm. Once that was done, network performance is back to normal.
• January 26, 2003 12:10am. The server for midcoast.com will be down for about 5 minutes to change a hard drive in the redundant drive array.
• January 25, 2003 12:10am. The server for midcoast.com will be down for about 5 minutes to change a hard drive in the redundant drive array.
• January 22, 2003 Downtown Camden's wireless is having some performance problems. Update 3:20pm. We have switched it back to the older system for now until we can work out some bugs in the new system. When we are confident we have worked the bugs out of it, we will put a notice up here a day before we move things back to the new fiber-based system.
• January 21, 2003 3:00pm. Downtown Camden wireless's feed has been switched from a Verizon T1 to MIS-managed fiber. This switchover caused about a five minute outage today. If you still have problems, reset your firewall and computer so that it recognizes our gateway's mac address. This fiber goes between our downtown Camden location and our Rockland datacenter and has a capacity of 200 Megabits/sec full duplex with our current equipment. It is redundant such that if a tranceiver fails or a fiber connection fails, things will still work at 100 Megabits/sec. While the benefits of the upgrade may not be immediately seen, it is the first of several other important upgrades for the Camden/Rockport area that will improve speed, capacity, and reliability.
• January 13, 2003 9:30am. The 589-3003 Liberty number has trouble. We are sending someone to fix it. Later, we will be installing a replacement modem server, which will cause a disruption when it is installed, but should prove reliable in the long run.
• January 9, 2003 Customers of Northland Telephone have had busy signals or all-circuits-in-use messages calling our 500 numbers. We are nowhere near capacity for 500 number calls from that area. We have Verizon investigating this. Update Jan 10, 5pm. Verizon has investigated and didn't find a problem in the Verizon system Customers who have talked to Northland have indicated that there are other places they could not call, and Northland had indicated there was a problem that they are working on. Things are working better this evening than last.
• January 8, 2003 9:30am. The 589-3003 Liberty number had trouble. We sent someone to fix this, and it is working again at 10:45am.
• January 7, 2003 C&W disconnected two of our seven T1s several weeks ahead of schedule. This has not caused any outage. The other company providing the replacement capacity has not finished their work yet. During peak usage times, surfing may slow a little while C&W works to correct their mistake. This repair is estimated to last a couple of days according to our current information.
• January 7, 2003 New bulletin boards have been installed. The old wwwboard ones had to be replaced due to their abuse by highly automated spammers who wanted to sell us chinese robes and shocking porn. The new bulletin boards are a good balance of ease-of-use and wishlist features, while providing the barriers to spam which people expect.
• January 7, 2003 12:15am. The server for midcoast.com will be down for about 5 minutes to change a hard drive in the redundant drive array.