Midcoast Internet Solutions News

Midcoast Internet Solutions

System
News & Notices

April 2000

April 27, 2000 6:15pm. wireless news: One of the 4 base radios in Owls Head (the directional which aims toward Rockland) was just software upgraded. This improves performance for people who use this radio compared to the old software that was on it. This includes people who feed from this antenna directly as well as from the Knox County courthouse repeater and the Benner Hill repeater.
April 27, 2000 1:30pm. The Union 786-6622 number was moved off the Damariscotta modem system and was redirected to our new POP in Union. The switchover took about 5 minutes, and knocked people offline who were using that number when the switchover took place. Please call either of our offices, or use the Trouble Ticket form above, to report any problems caused by this change in service.
April 25, 2000 7:00pm. The Wiscasset POP is back a full capacity. The inbuilding wiring was the culprit, even though it tested fine last week when installed. Mice are being rounded up and questioned. New wiring will be installed and service will be moved to that new wiring within the next few weeks.
April 25, 2000 4:00pm. The new PRI(23 lines in one connection) that was installed last week in Wiscasset is no longer functioning. We verified that the problem does not exist on "our side" of the connection. There is a chance that BA will be able to get a tech by Wisc this Afternoon/Evening.
April 25, 2000 11:00am. Routing configurations needed to be adjusted for the Damariscotta NOC/POP. Prior to this some people were connecting but unable to browse. This has been remedied.
April 25, 2000 11:30am. 442 & 882 numbers are experiencing problems. Bell is investigating the status of these circuits. A Bell Trouble Ticket has been issued.
April 25, 2000 1am-2am. The hub/switch upgrade went very successfully and caused about 3 seconds of outage for wireless customers and people dialing into the versanet modems. This upgrades the link from the Owls Head Tower to the NOC from 10mbit fiber connected to 10mbit hubs into a 100mbit fiber with 10/100 ethernet switches on both ends. This will provide more efficiency and room for growth in the wireless network.
After the upgrade, we logged into "grounds" which is the router for the wireless network and it failed on us right then and there. Grounds has offered about 2 years of perfect service till right after the upgrade. We hauled it out and replaced grounds with a machine we'd designated as a future replacement. Needless to say, the replacement of that machine happened sooner than we'd planned for, but 1am-2am was a good time for it anyways as it interupted the least amount of activity at that hour. The new grounds has all 100mbit ethernet cards, more memory, more computing power (Athlon-500 vs the old K6-300), and more disk space for running our proxy server.
April 25, 2000 1am. The core router for the Damariscotta hub has been replaced with a more capable unit that will enhance access for this region of the MIS system.
April 24, 2000 Midnight. Maintenance will be performed on a couple of system wihtin MIS tonoght. A router replacement will be attempted at midnight in Damariscotta, followed by some hub/switch work at the NOC in Owlshead. Interruptions in service will be very brief.
April 22, 2000 Morning. AT&T has a problem in Cambridge Mass which is making connectivity for some of our dialup users flaky when visiting sites outside of midcoast.com. They don't expect the problem to be too long, it's a routing problem there.
April 21, 2000 4:20pm-4:35pm. A problem with a router in Owls Head caused problems accessing the internet for many people for a short time this afternoon. This router has caused trouble in the past and we hope to replace it within 2 weeks.
April 21, 2000 Wisc/Bath/BBay The upgrade to the 882/442 POP was completed last night and additional dialup lines were turned on this afternoon. This POP increased in capacity form 23 to 46 ports and should eliminate ANY busy problems that have occurred in the past few months.
April 20, 2000 An email from Bell Atlantic has explained the circuit problem from Mon & Tue as having been the fault of Tidewater. Is there an echo in here??
April 18, 2000 In an attempt to nail down and isolate the problem that has plagued our network for the last two mornings, we initiated a call to BA about the circuit. We were told that the problem was within the Tidewater system, yet Tidewater had just told us that the problem was with Bell Atlantic. We terminated the conversation with Bell and contacted Tidewater to inform them that they were getting blamed for the circuit. The GM of Tidewater has now had to step into the issue to get a real answer from someone in Bell. We apologize for the inconvienience, and for some much more than that, these service interruptions cause. MIS makes every effort to uncover what went wrong so that it can be remedied. It is insulting to be treated like a ping pong ball by the very companies that should depend on our business for their livelyhood. You deserve better.
April 18, 2000 10:15 For the second day in a row, the circuit that connects the Damariscotta Hub to the rest of the MIS system started to misbehave and then stopped functioning altogether. Through troubleshooting with Tidewater, today we determined that this was definately a Bell Atlantic problem. We regret that this interruption in service occurred. MIS is taking steps to eliminate the potential for these types of event to affect our service. No explanation for the outage is available. We will ask, but don't hold your breath.
April 18, 2000 7:30-10:15am The T1 serving Damariscotta (and Union and Wiscasset) is misbehaving again today in the same manner it did yesterday. (Read below). A call has been placed with Tidewater.
April 17, 2000 Scheduled Service Outage @ Midnight - The upgrade to the router in Damariscotta will happen at Midnight tonight. Service should be interrupted for less than 5 minutes. Following that, an ethernet switch will be upgraded in Owls Head. This should also take less than 5 minutes.
April 17, 200012:30pm. The T1 that services the Damariscotta and surrounds went down at around 9am. A Call was placed to Tidewater. The circuit miraculously came back to life at noon, three hours later. Although the call was made to Tidewaters repair service within minutes of the service going down, Tidewater personnel were not notified until 5 minutes prior to the fix.
April 11, 2000 00:20-00:45, The T1 to Damariscotta was out while we moved it to a new router in Owls Head. This is half of the job in the upgrade of the Damariscotta T1 performance.
April 10, 2000 A newsletter is being sent out over the next 24 hours by email to everyone @midcoast.com. A copy is also here.
April 10, 2000 One of the two omni antennas on the Knox County Courthouse in Rockland was apparently blown out of its bracket during the high winds in recent weather. This was fixed at about 1 pm and had caused performance problems for a couple of Rockland wireless users.
April 4, 2000 One of the MIS routers received a reboot. This caused downtime, for about 5-15 minutes, depending on your location. The Squid software that provided caching for our netwrok also required a restart. The two event were related and those using the caching server would have seen a longer period of inactivity.
April 2, 2000 During the next week MIS has two upgrades planned. We will be adding new lines to the Wiscasset-Boothbay-Bath POP. Please keep an eye on the system notices for a more exact time and day. The routers that service the Damariscotta NOC are being upgraded for better performance. Again, please keep an eye on the announcements page for more info. Both of these upgrades will only cause very short interruptions in service.

The following links represent all the sytyem notices from MIS since we started saving them in 1996. Happy Reading!

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