We are replacing some hardware that is about to fail in one of our web servers. The server will go down for a short time and will affect some web hosting customers. The downtime should be very short, and this is a necessary replacement to keep the server from failing later. – 10:20pm
Server back online at 10:28. We have tested it and all sites look OK. Eight minutes downtime.
At 4:22pm we experienced an outage of our primary circuit. It is an upstream outage and seems to be causing issues with Verizon phones and multiple carriers as well. We are working with upstream providers on a resolution.
5:19pm – The issue is a major fiber cut between Birmingham and Talladega. There is no current estimated time to repair.
10:15pm – Estimated Time to Repair is now 3:00am. AT&T has identified two problems — the fiber cut and a hardware issue caused by the bouncing circuit. If they fix either one or the two, our circuits should normalize.
3:25am – Service seems to be fully restored. Some networks/carriers still affected by the issue, and complete restoration of all fiber is now estimated to be repaired by 4:00am CDT.
Don’t forget: You can follow updates such as these on Twitter by following @netsolinc.
One of our wireless base units is experiencing a problem. This is only affecting a few customers. The first issue was reported at 4:27pm and was “fixed” at 4:43pm, but the unit is continuing to fail. We are in the process of diagnosing the problem and rerouting affected customers to our redundant wireless base units. It is currently 6:15pm.
All customers are have been successfully rerouted to redundant systems. The primary system is currently operational as well, but we will be testing it to find the issue causing the sporadic malfunction. 6:30pm
The Domain Name System (DNS) is the “phone book” of the internet. Computers don’t understand web addresses like https://www.netsolinc.com. They understand IP addresses. In the same way that you use a phone book to retrieve a phone number by a person’s name, DNS changes web addresses into IP addresses. For instance, https://www.netsolinc.com gets changed to http://74.252.14.254.
The speed of your internet experience can be greatly influenced by DNS. If your computer is taking a long time to look up names, then sites will load slower. Most pages will reference many addresses, and each of those addresses will need to be checked with DNS. If DNS is slow, then each of those checks contributes to a slower page load. For years, we at Network Solutions, Inc. have been utilizing a free service called OpenDNS. OpenDNS is a company which provides free, fast, and reliable DNS. They have some premium offerings as well, which can let you customize your internet experience. The addresses of their servers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. All you have to do to take advantage of their speed and reliability is use those numbers for your DNS servers.
Since the Domain Name System is basically your link to finding sites on the internet, it can also be used to filter bad sites. OpenDNS also offers a free service call Family Shield. To utilize this service, all you do is use 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123 as your DNS servers. Using those servers, sites with adult content, anonymizers, and phishing get automatically blocked. Using this service, you can worry a lot less about what content your child is viewing on the internet.
We hope these suggestions can bring better performance and/or a safer internet experience for you and your computer.