tnolen

February 20, 2025 –We’ve been receiving multiple inquiries from customers trying to send emails to att.net, bellsouth.net and other domains handled by the AT&T servers from Microsoft 365 hosted accounts.  The people using the Microsoft accounts are getting bounces saying that the email was rejected for security reasons because it does not have a PTR record.  A PTR record is basically caller-ID for servers on the internet.   The problem is that Microsoft’s servers DO have PTR records that are correct and complete, but AT&T’s servers aren’t able to figure that out.

The message receive will say something like “A security check at att.net failed due to misconfigured settings at <sender’s domain>.”

However, that is inaccurate…The sending domain will be correct, and it is, in fact, problems on AT&T’s end.

This issue is NOT affecting emails hosted by Network Solutions, Inc.   So far, we’ve only seen this happening to Microsoft hosted email accounts.

CORRECTION:  This issue WAS also affecting emails coming from our servers, but not every email is being blocked.   As of 7:00am February 21, we do not know if the issue is completely fixed, but we have seen some emails blocked by this problem.   Since not all emails are being blocked, our recommendation is that if you receive a bounce message, try sending it again as it may go through.

February 13, 2025 – We are investigating an issue with our iFoye service regarding a possible compromise of accounts.  Out of an abundance of caution, we’ve shutdown the service while we look into the issue.   Our technicians do have other remote access options, but subscribers to the iFoye service will be impacted by this until we have completed our investigation and brought the service back online.  We do expect that to be complete today.   Updates will be posted here.

Update 2:30pm – Updates have been applied.   However, there is a chance that the hash of passwords used for iFoye subscribers has been leaked.  We recommend that all iFoye users reset their passwords and we are requiring two factor authentications (2FA) now using an authenticator application.   If you need assistance with setup, please reach out to us.

January 29, 2025 – As part of our transition to a new billing system which also includes the previously announced client portal, the billing department accidentally sent out invoices this month utilizing both the old system in the new systems.  In a minority of cases, there are differences between the two invoices.  In these cases, the first one is correct.   The “wrong” invoices were emailed out today, January 29th.   The correct invoices would have been received on Monday, January 27th.   So, please ignore the invoice(s) received on the 29th.   This is not a phishing attempt or anything, it was just error while testing the new system as the second invoices were not supposed to be emailed at all.

If you have any questions, please email billing@netsolinc.com or call 256-547-6817 and choose option 3 for billing.  We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

January 19, 2025 – 9:00am – We have recovered from a power outage caused by some kind of repairs to the power infrastructure JUST in front of our offices.  Unfortunately, we did have a failure of a generator transfer switch which caused some downtime.   We do test the generator system under load, but any test does not always guarantee that the next use will be successful.

We are pleased to share that our backup generator is now fully operational, and we are working diligently to bring all systems back online. At this time, many of our services and servers are running smoothly, but please note that we are operating on our primary generator until full power is restored by Alabama Power Co. You may still experience intermittent issues as we continue to stabilize the environment.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or disruption this may have caused and deeply appreciate your patience and understanding during this time. Our team is monitoring the situation closely and is committed to resolving any issues as quickly as possible. If you have specific concerns or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our support team—we’re here to help. Thank you for trusting us with your hosting and IT needs.

Update 11:00am – The work has been completed and our staff is going through all services to make sure everything is online properly.  If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.  Since it is Sunday, you will need to hit 8 for after hours support.

Update 3:35pm – We have identified a possibly related issue affecting a small percentage of email accounts.  Affected users are unable to log into the web interface for checking email.  Accessing email through an application such as Thunderbird or Outlook works fine, as does mobile devices.  Only when logging in through https://webmail.internetpro.net will affected users see an “invalid login” error.   We are working to resolve this, but until we do, please use a program like Thunderbird for checking affected accounts.

December 19, 2024 – 7:30am – This morning we had a failure of one of our power distribution units.   It affected a lot of systems which caused most of our services to be offline.  This affected email, web sites, phone systems (including ours), and other systems.  We have identified the issue and implemented a workaround.  Most systems have come back online, but we are still working to bring a few up.  We will be posting more later.

Update – 7:40am – We had reports that the email system was not authenticating.   The backend part of the system failed to come online, but we have brought it online now and all services regarding mail seem to have recovered.  Some email may be delayed in reaching your mailbox.

Update – 7:55am – We believe that all affected systems are online and functioning normally.  If you have a system that is still not working for you, please contact us at support@internetpro.net via the chat in the lower right of this screen, or call us at 256-547-6817.

Update – 8:28am – We were made aware of a few shared websites that did not come back online.  This was because of a web server misconfiguration that would have been caught during normal operation, but the reboot due to the power failure caused the bad config to be loaded and kept some sites from working properly.   This has been resolved.

This issue was caused by a failure of one of our network-controlled power distribution systems.  We use that type of system to be able to automatically and remotely reboot systems as well as to check power loads, battery conditions, etc.  The entire bank of outlets failed, and caused some systems without redundant power supplies to go down. Unfortunately, there were a couple of critical bottlenecks there which caused other systems that had not gone offline to be unreachable.   We  will be scheduling maintenance in the near future to replace the unit and that will be done during off-peak hours.  We will also be evaluating the bottlenecks made relevant in this failure and will be working to implement design changes to prevent a recurrence.

June 22, 2024 – In what seems to be a regular thing now, we had an equipment failure of a battery backup system this morning at about 7:15am.    It affected a few servers including a host for some shared websites, a virtual server host affecting a few cloud  phone system instances (including ours),  a couple of network switches, a firewall, and a couple of backup servers.     Our technicians responded quickly and brought the affected systems back online within just a few minutes.   We are investigating the root cause, as the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) is reporting 100% battery and not reporting a loss of mains power.

Hopefully, as they say, things come in threes and this is the last issue for a while.   If you have any questions or concerns about this, please email us at support@internetpro.net, or call us at 256-547-6817.

Update July 28  3:45pm – We’re seeing some strange issues which may be related to this UPS problem.   Some VPS machines and at least one shared host server are being affected.  We’re also seeing some performance issues.   Technicians are investigating.

Update 4:33pm –  It was, in fact, the UPS issue.   We had replaced the batteries in the unit, but it looks like the entire unit will need to be replaced.  We’ll be ordering a new one and we’ll schedule a maintenance window for its replacement.

Update 4:39pm – We believe all affected systems are back online.