Midcoast Internet Solutions
System
News & Notices
October 1996 Archive
- Oct 29, 1996 Our satellite dish has come out of alignment and
is not taking in new news right now. We will be realigning it tonight.
This would be the cause for not much news coming in on news.midcoast.com.
You can use news2.midcoast.com is necessary in the mean time.
- Oct 27, 1996 For the second time this month, we caught someone
using our system for spamming. Spamming is the act of sending lots of
junk-email to people who didnt ask for it. Our procedure is to disable the
account ASAP, without notification, until the issue is resolved, or even
permanently. People on the internet don't stand for it. If the act of
spamming overloaded our server, the spammer could be sued for
denial-of-service on behalf of the other customers which rely on the
machine.
- Oct 24, 1996 Late in the morning, things were down for a few
minutes while we replaced the modems with a US Robotics Total Control
Modem Rack. (This is the ultimate modem system). Please let me know
(webmaster@midcoast.com) if reliabilty improves as a result of the change.
- Oct 21, 1996 Washington (845) lost power from 6pm to 7pm
during the evening due to the storm. The site is UPS protected, but the
batteries last only so long.
- Oct 21, 1996 Union (785) lost power from 7:15pm to 8pm this
evening as a result of the storm. The site is UPS protected, but the
batteries last only so long.
- Oct 21, 1996 Sometime later this week, thursday or friday, we
will be in Union to replace the modems (USR Sportsters) with a USR Courier
modem rack. Couriers are the best modems made at any price and are
especialy good for systems where telephone facilities are not very modern.
An additional line will also be added for the 785 exchange.
- Oct 15, 1996 The modem server upgrade which began at 11pm was
successful. About 40 pounds of excess wire and power strips were removed,
and a new portmaster replaced caffeine. Now, 236, 785, 596, 594, and 354
dialing customers have one consolidated password list on dns.
- Oct 11, 1996 Between 9:00am and 10:30am, our access to the
internet is likely to be down while our provider makes some exciting
changes which will greatly increase the reliability and speed of the
connection. This will protect us better against "Sprint failures" and
accidental fiber cuts, and things of that nature. More info here.
- Oct 9, 1996 We performed an operating system upgrade to the
modem server for Union.
- Oct 8, 1996 Virtual web server pricing was changed. It is now
priced a bit lower, and dialup access was seperated from the pricing,
making it lower priced still.
- Oct 8, 1996 The News server, news.midcoast.com, was restarted
to correct a problem with new articles which had arrived but did not
display when people viewed a newsgroup.
- Oct 8, 1996 Two more lines were added in Washington for a
total of six lines. We can handle it.
- Oct 7, 1996 Monday. The 845-2029 number is being
decommissioned. People in the 845 exchange should be fully switched to the
845-2080 number.
- Oct 4, 1996 11:00pm HalfnHalf will be removed and caffeine
will return as a modem server. This will cause a disruption for about 15
minutes. The new caffeine supports PAP authentication, so the only number
not yet supporting PAP-login will be the 563-3098 modem pool. That number
will fully support PAP with a week or two.
- Oct 4, 1996 Seven more lines were ordered for our Owls Head
modem bank. These will be installed on the 11th.
- Oct 2, 1996 10:30pm 2xcaffeine, a modem server, will be down.
This may affect some modem users, but not many, for about an hour. It will
be replaced with a Portmaster named mochajava. The Portmaster is more
reliable and more feature-packed.
- Oct 2, 1996 7am Washington's new system was down for an hour
while Nynex does some error-testing on a leased line. They found a bad
repeater in Owls Head and put that circuit on a seperate set of wires.
- Oct 1, 1996 Two more lines were ordered for Washington. This
will bring the new system there to 6 lines. These will be installed Tuesday
the 8th.
- Oct 1, 1996 The time machine should be working now. Please
report any inconsistencies to jp@midcoast.com. The time machine also
reports usage for jolt.midcoast.com and jitters.midcoast.com, the Washington
and Wiscasset servers.
What's been happening recently:
Past Months
11185
photo credit: 2600 Magazine