geeksnet - Gee-News

Gee-News

The latest news and announcements to subscribers.

We have added this page to our Website to keep our customers informed of network issues that affect our Dial-up and High Speed Access services. We will post information concerning these services as needed.

It is our goal to provide our customers with the highest quality of service possible. We achieve this by working together with our customers to provide a quality connection for everyone. A policy that helps us achieve this is our 240 hour limit per month on all standard dial-up accounts. We have set this limit because we decided to have no automated software in place to disconnect our users for any reason (other than nonpayment). We do not disconnect accounts due to inactivity or extended usage. We allow our customers to decide when they want to get on and off of the Internet. No interrupted downloads or games - you choose how you use your hours! Usage above this limit results in additional charges of $1/hour, therefore make sure that you have signed up for a package that meets your needs.

We will be adding to our Frequently Asked Questions often, so please check them for any questions you may have.

To view this page in chronological order click on these clock symbols.

Tuesday - April 2nd, 2002 - Classification - Moderate

Incident Report #6/2002 - Mail Server Stop Responding

6:51 PM - Our mail server stops responding. All mail service is halted.

6:57 PM - The network monitoring system pages a technician.

7:04 PM - The technician determines the server cannot be connected to remotely and leaves for Sprint's Central Office where the server is located.

7:18 PM - Technician arrives and find server responding normally but unable to see the network. Upon further troubleshooting it is found that the network cable to the server was knocked loose. The cable was reconnected, and the server was rebooted.

7:26 PM - The mail server resumes all mail service. This outage was most likely caused by a Sprint duct cleaning crew that was performing routine facilities maintenance in our server room at that time.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 10680 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-12 hrs 07min(8 incidents)(99.98%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-10 hrs 34 min(9 incidents)(99.98% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 1.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 25 mins

Web Hosting
Total downtime for WWW1 - 4 hrs 0min (5 incidents). (99.99%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW2 - 4 hrs 0 min.(5 incidents). (99.99%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW3 - 9 hours 44 min (6 incidents).(99.98% Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW4 - 25 min (1 incidents). (99.999% Uptime)

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 10 hours 0 min (99.99% Uptime)
Total downtime 2002 - 3 hours 10 min

Thursday - February 28th, 2002 - Classification - Severe

Incident Report #5/2002 - Wilson POP Down

8:15 AM - The Terminal Server that answers calls for our Wilson dial-up customers stopped responding. It is likely that all users who were connected at this time were disconnected. The nature of this failure did not trip any alarms on our network monitoring.

9:30 AM - We received our first call from a Wilson customer notifying us of a problem in connecting. We received 5 calls within 2 minutes. A few quick tests determined we were not accepting calls.

9:45 AM - The Terminal Server was rebooted and resumed taking calls.

This is the first incident for this piece of equipment. It has been in constant operation for over a year without a single second of downtime.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 9800 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-12 hrs 07min(8 incidents)(99.98%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-10 hrs 34 min(9 incidents)(99.98% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 1.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 25 mins

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 9 hours 25 min (99.9% Uptime)
Total downtime 2002 - 2 hours 35 min

Monday - February 18th, 2002 - Classification - Severe

Incident Report #4/2002 - Power Outage

9:06 AM - The city of Greenville experienced 2 quick power outages. (unknown to us - Winterville power was uninterrupted)

9:12 AM - Our network monitoring system notified us that our entire network was down.

9:15 AM - A technician was dispatched to Sprint's Central Office.

9:25 AM - Technician arrives at equipment and finds that one of our battery backups failed during the power outage. Sprint's Central Office has an extensive power backup system, however it takes 20 seconds for it to take over in the event of a power outage. We have 2 large battery backups to keep our equipment up for these 20 seconds. It seems that one of the backups received a surge or spike which caused it to shutdown. This took down 1/3 of our equipment. Plugs were rearranged and power was brought back up.

9:31 AM - Service was restored.

We will be adding a new battery backup to the Central office location today. This will caused 2 or 3 five minute interruptions of service while systems are being moved.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 9672 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-12 hrs 07min(8 incidents)(99.98%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-9 hrs 04 min(8 incidents)(99.98% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 0.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 25 mins

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 9 hours 25 min (99.9% Uptime)
Total downtime 2002 - 2 hours 35 min

Wednesday - February 13th, 2002 - Classification - Moderate

Incident Report #3/2002 - Mail Service Interrupted

1:15 PM - A software error halted all mail service. The nature of this error does not allow it to be detected by our monitoring systems. This is the same error we have been experiencing over the past 2 months.

1:30 PM - The first reports by customers of this outage are received at our office.

1:40 PM - Service is restored. Additional steps were taken to prevent this interruption and the troubleshooting of this problem will continue.

E-mail Service
Total downtime 2002 - 2 hours 10 min

Friday - January 25th, 2002 - Classification - Moderate

Incident Report #2/2002 - Mail Service Interrupted

1:30 PM - A software error halted all mail service. The nature of this error does not allow it to be detected by our monitoring systems.

2:10 PM - The first reports by customers of this outage are received at our office. All technicians who are able to fix this problem are traveling at this time. Nearest technician is dispatched to correct problem.

3:15 PM - Service is restored. This is the 4th extended interruption of service in 3 weeks.

4:30 PM - Research into the issue lists a recently enabled feature as a possible cause. This feature was disabled and we will continue to monitor the software.

E-mail Service
Total downtime 2002 - 1 hours 45 min

Wednesday - January 17th, 2002 - Classification - Notice

The scheduled maintenance to our network was completed at 8:30 am. This maintenance was scheduled for 3:30am - 6:00am, however there were several issues that delayed restoration of the service. We apologize for any interruptions of service during this time. During this maintenance all of our equipment at our Winterville location was moved to Sprint's Central Office. These facilities provide us with a backup generator to maintain our service during short power outages. This also alleviates several bandwidth bottlenecks, and removes several possible failure points. This move will increase both speed and reliability of our network. Several other equipment changes were made to help us during many equipment disaster recovery scenarios.

Tuesday - January 8th, 2002 - Classification - Minor

Incident Report #1/2002 - Web E-mail Interface Fails

1:15 PM - The web e-mail interface failed due to a software error. This affected on the web interface. POP3 and SMTP services were uninterrupted.

1:45 PM - The web e-mail interface was returned to service. This is a known software issue with our mail program. There is no fix available at this time and we have made every effort to minimize the frequency of this failure.

Tuesday - December 11th, 2001 - Classification - Minor

Incident Report #20 - Geeksnet Website Down

12:00 PM - It was reported that our webpage was not available to the Internet. We determined it was a problem with the Cold Fusion Server software which our site uses to dynamically build our front page. No other sites or services were affected by this failure. This is the second incident involving this software package.

1:00 PM - After extensive troubleshooting of the problem we decided to upgrade this software to the latest version. This upgrade required several reboots of the server causing all of the sites we host to be unavailable intermittently for several minutes at a time.

3:00 PM - New software installation is completed and configured. Software is tested and passes. Geeksnet front page is restored and service returns to normal.

Monday - November 19th, 2001 - Classification - Moderate

Incident Report #19 - PRI down at Greenville POP

Busy signals were reported Monday evening. Investigation revealed the Sprint PRI did not roll over calls to the new modem. Sprint reported fixing the problem Tuesday morning but we will continue to monitor the situation.

Wednesday - November 14th, 2001 - Classification - Severe

Incident Report #20 - Power Outage in Winterville area

10:10 AM - Power was lost to the Winterville area where our store is located. Approximately 30% of the equipment for our ISP is located at this store. This is the third occurrence of power loss in 3 months.

10:20 AM - Battery backup power was exhausted so all systems at our Winterville location were shutdown. This stopped all mail services, web hosting, and dial-up authentication. Users already connected to our service were still able to browse the Internet.

10:25 AM - Power was restored to the Winterville area.

10:30 AM - All systems were brought back up and service was restored. We have devised a plan to limit the effect of a power loss in the Winterville area on our dial-up service and should be implementing it within 2 months.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 7250 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-11 hrs 42min(7 incidents)(99.8%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-8 hrs 39 min(7 incidents)(99.8% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 0.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 0 mins

Web Hosting
Total downtime for WWW1 - 4 hrs 0min (5 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW2 - 4 hrs 0 min.(5 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW3 - 9 hours 44 min (6 incidents).(99.8% Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW4 - 0 hours (0 incidents). (100% Uptime)

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 6 hours 50 min (99.9% Uptime)

Monday - November 12th, 2001 - Classification - Moderate

Incident Report #19 - PRI failure at Greenville POP

3:30 PM - Busy signals were reported by several users for our Greenville dial-up number. Upon checking the equipment it was found that two sets of modems were not functioning. The failure on one card was caused by a PRI failure at Sprint. The second modem was not accepting calls resulting from a separate equipment failure at Sprint. Some users may experience busy signals through the afternoon until the phone company can repair their equipment.

5:15 PM - Sprint notified us that the the problems had been resolved, the cards were reseated, and the lines came back up. Users immediately began using the lines. We will continue to monitor our equipment and apologize for the busy signals.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 7200 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-11 hrs 32min(6 incidents)(99.8%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.
Total time for busy signals - 6 hrs (approx)

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-8 hrs 29 min(5 incidents)(99.8% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 0.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 0 mins

Web Hosting
Total downtime for WWW1 - 3 hrs 50 min (4 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW2 - 3 hrs 50 min.(4 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW3 - 9 hours 24 min (6 incidents).(99.8% Uptime)

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 6 hours 40 min (99.9% Uptime)

Friday - October 5th, 2001 - Classification - Notice

Capacity at the Greenville POP expanded

A new modem card/PRI was installed at our Greenville POP location. This addition increases our capacity and is expected prevent any busy signals for the next 3-4 months. As always we will continue to monitor our network to assure our customers of the best possible quality of service.

Monday - October 1st, 2001 - Classification - Moderate

Incident Report #18 - Modem Card/PRI failure at Greenville POP

1:00 PM - Busy signals were reported by several users for our Greenville dial-up number. Upon checking the equipment it was found that one set of modems was not functioning. This can be caused by a card failure (10% chance) or a line failure (90% chance). We have contacted sprint to have this line checked. It is likely that this failure occurred this weekend and may have caused some busy signals since then. This loss reduces the amount of customers we can service by 23. Please disconnect when not using the service to allow other users on when possible.

4:30 PM - Circuit was reported to be back up by Sprint, and the equipment was restarted. Service returns to normal. Please note that a new modem card and PRI line has been ordered and is due to be installed 10/12/01. This addition will further increase our dial-up capacity and should prevent any busy signals for the next 3-4 months at our Greenville POP. Our Wilson POP has been busy free for 5 months.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 6480 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-11 hrs 32min(6 incidents)(99.8%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.
Total time for busy signals - 4 hrs (approx)

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-8 hrs 29 min(5 incidents)(99.8% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 0.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 0 mins

Web Hosting
Total downtime for WWW1 - 3 hrs 50 min (4 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW2 - 3 hrs 50 min.(4 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW3 - 9 hours 24 min (6 incidents).(99.8% Uptime)

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 6 hours 40 min (99.9% Uptime)

Friday - September 21st, 2001 - Classification - Notice

Incident Report #17 (continued) - w32.Nimda.A@mm worm attacks the Internet

3:30 PM - All services were restored to normal service. The outbreak affected a total of 2 of the 14 servers on our network. We had intermittent loss of authentication and mail services for 3 days due to complications from this virus. These services were down for periods of 15 minutes or less. Our billing software was unavailable during this period and we appreciate the patience all of our customer showed for billing questions. Many sites on the Internet were affected and some continue to be affected by this worm. It continues to slow the speed of the Internet due to the broadcasts that this worm sends out as it is still present on many servers outside our network.

Tuesday - September 18th, 2001 - Classification - Severe

Incident Report #17 - w32.Nimda.A@mm worm attacks the Internet

9:05 AM - Our primary webserver was infected by the w32.Nimda.A@mm worm. This worm uses a security hole in Microsoft NT Server 4.0 to replicate itself automatically through web servers. Once the machine was infected it used all available bandwidth to try to propagate itself. This caused intermittent interruption in mail and hosting services. This worm has affected many servers across the world and is responsible for many pages not being available as well as very slow performance in general. No fixes have been released for infected servers at this time. We have removed the server from service to prevent propagation and will begin to rebuild the hosted sites.

Wednesday - August 28th, 2001 - Classification - Minor

Incident Report #16 - Web E-mail Interface Fails

8:45 AM - The web e-mail interface was returned to service. This had failed sometime during the night. This is the second failure of this interface in the last 2 days. POP3 and SMTP service was not affected. We are currently working to upgrade our entire e-mail system and anticipate completion of this project within 30 days.

Thursday - August 23rd, 2001 - Classification - Notice

Incident Report #15 - Equipment Failure at the Wilson Site

2:00 PM - One of our modem cards was removed from service due to equipment failure. The loss of this card reduces our dial-up capacity at the Wilson site by 33% and may affect our dial-up customers. We have not experienced a busy signal at either dial-up due to full equipment in over 5 months. The card was sent off for repair and should be returned to service in 2-3 weeks. During extremely busy times we may have some busy signals, but we do not expect the loss of this card to greatly affect the quality of service. This card has no effect on the speed of connections nor will it affect any other services that we provide. Any busy signals during this period will be reported on this page.

Monday - August 20th, 2001 - Classification - Severe

Incident Report #14 - Power Outage at our Winterville Location

3:00 PM - Power was lost to the Winterville area where our store is located. Approximately 40% of the equipment for our ISP is located at this store. This is the second occurrence in 2 months of power loss.

3:20 PM - Battery backup power was exhausted so all systems at our Winterville location were shutdown. This stopped all mail services, web hosting, and dial-up authentication. Users already connected to our service were still able to browse the Internet.

3:50 PM - Power was restored to the Winterville area.

3:55 PM - All systems were brought back up and service was restored. We are currently devising a plan to limit the effect of a power loss in the Winterville area on our dial-up service.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 5350 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-11 hrs 32min(6 incidents)(99.8%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-8 hrs 29 min(5 incidents)(99.8% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 0.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 0 mins

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 6 hours 40 min (99.9% Uptime)

Wednesday - August 8th, 2001 - Classification - Severe

Incident Report #13 - Authentication Failure

4:45 PM - The primary authentication server was taken down for maintenance. This had been tested twice during the day and both times the secondary authentication server took over immediately and there was no interruption of authentication service. However the secondary server did not immediately take over on the actual event and we were unable to authenticate any new calls.

4:55 PM - We started receiving calls from customers who were unable to authenticate.

5:00 PM - The secondary authentication server was manually started and incoming calls resumed. This incident did not affect any customers who were already connected to our service.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began - approx 5100 hours)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-10 hrs 52min(6 incidents)(99.8%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-7 hrs 49 min(5 incidents)(99.8% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 0.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 0 mins

Web Hosting
Total downtime for WWW1 - 2 hrs 50 min (2 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW2 - 2 hrs 50 min.(2 incidents). (99.9%Uptime)
Total downtime for WWW3 - 8 hours 24 min (4 incidents).(99.9% Uptime)

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 5 hours 40 min (99.9% Uptime)

Saturday - July 7th, 2001 - Classification - Severe

Incident Report #12 - Power Outage at our Winterville location

2:40 PM - Power was lost to the Winterville area where our store is located. Approximately 40% of the equipment for our ISP is located at this store.

3:00 PM - Battery backup power was exhausted so all systems at our Winterville location were shutdown. This stopped all mail services, web hosting, and dial-up authentication. Users already connected to our service were still able to browse the Internet.

4:00 PM - Power was restored to the Winterville area.

4:15 PM - All systems were brought back up and service was restored.

Totals Since 1/11/01 (Date this logging began)

Greenville Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-10 hrs 37min(5 incidents)(99.7%Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 3.

Wilson Dial-up
Total downtime for incoming calls-7 hrs 34 min(4 incidents)(99.8% Uptime)
Total disconnection incidents - 0.

High Speed Access
Downtime - 0 mins

E-mail Service
Total downtime - 5 hours 40 min (99.9% Uptime)

View January-February 2001 Gee-News Archive
View March-April 2001 Gee-News Archive
View May-June 2001 Gee-News Archive