News and Updates

June 7, 2019 – Hot on the heels of the issues yesterday, we’ve experienced an issue with our hosted Exchange services.   Our engineers have isolated the problem, which is again a failed piece of hardware.   We are in the process of replacing that equipment.  We do believe that the hardware failure from yesterday damaged a few items including ports on servers and routers also connected to the failed switch.  We will be announcing a maintenance window to address some of these redundant hardware items in the near future.

Update – The issue was more complex than initially thought (sounds familiar).   We have restored service but are still working on the issue.  Service may be interrupted again.

Update 11:02am = Service has been fully restored.   If you are on hosted Exchange and are still having issues, please let us know by support chat, email support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.

Update June 9 8:50pm – An issue with outgoing email was found and fixed.  Some emails sent since the earlier issue may have been delayed or failed.  If they were delayed, you will get a notice as such.  Failures will also be sent back to the sender.  This only affects email being sent FROM our servers.  Email coming TO our servers was not affected.

Thursday June 6, 2019 – We had network failure resulting from a core switch having an issue.   The outage lasted from approximately 1:11pm to 1:29pm while we tracked the issue and made the correction.  All services have returned to normal, and we do apologize for the interruption.   We do not expect any further problems from this issue.

Update:  As I posted the resolution, the problem reoccurred.  We are in the process of replacing equipment, but this does not seem to be a trivial issue.    Further updates to follow.

Update:  Definitely a core switch, but what we thought would be resolved with a reboot turned into a total hardware failure.  Because of the nature of the switch and the number of systems touched, this is affecting all services.  Some systems will take a bit of time to bring online.

Update: 2:24pm – Services are being restored now.  Most sites are up as well as email.  Some virtual servers are still awaiting recovery.

Update: Please note that our phone system and chat support are still being affected as they both reside on a virtual server which has not yet recovered.

Update: 2:42pm – Our phones and online chat are back.

Update 2:55pm – More and more VPS systems are coming online.   If you have specific status questions please use the support chat feature or email support@internetpro.net.

Update 3:15pm – It looks like all systems have recovered.   If you observe a problem with your website or service, please contact our technicians at 256-547-6817, by chat, or by emailing support@internetpro.net.

Network Solutions, Inc. is looking for an experienced network technician.  We are looking for someone with experience in these areas:

• Office365
• WIndows domains
• Exchange
• VOIP
• Routing

Bonus areas of experience include:

• Linux
• Apple
• SQL

Industry certifications are a plus.

We are a local Gadsden, Alabama based company with benefits including medical, dental, vision, retirement, and others.  Send resumes to debbie@netsolinc.com.

March 7, 2019 – We have seen many of our users receiving a phishing email which is trying to harvest usernames and passwords.   The email looks like the example below:

–BEGIN

–END

Please note that our system will not send you any warning via email.   If you do exceed storage limits, users sending to you will receive a bounce back saying that your quota has been exceeded.  We will never send out an email asking for your username and password.  Generally, any emails you receive that ask for such information are scams.   We have reported the site hosting the form which harvests the users and passwords as a malicious site so hopefully it will begin being blocked by search engines and browsers.

If you have any questions regarding this scam OR if you fell for it, please email  us at support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817 so we can reset your password.

January 24, 2019 – We have been made aware of issues with Comcast’s network in Etowah County this morning. Comcast is aware of the problem and has an ETA of 11:26AM for service restoration.

Some clients are experiencing complete loss of service and others are having intermittent connectivity.

December 26, 2018 – We are in the process of continuing the mandatory server updates which we had previously announced via letters to customers, socical media, and on this site (https://www.netsolinc.com/server-upgrades-2/ ).  This round of updates will affect our site as well as some customers.  We will continue updating here as we proceed.

Update 4:00pm – Most sites should be in good order now unless there are compatibility issues with the new versions of software which have been installed.  We urge customers to thoroughly check their sites for functionality issues and let us know if any are found.

Update 6:20pm – We’ve finished checking through sites and we have identified a few issues.  We will be reaching out to the customers who we know are impacted tomorrow.  However, feel free to contact us if you think there is an issue which we have not contacted you about.

For questions or concerns about these upgrades, please email support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.

December 7, 2018 – We’ve received a new email scam which is going out with our company name and at least one staff member mentioned.  This scam seems to be linking to a virus-carrying spreadsheet, but there may be other versions.  It seems to have been relayed through a compromised email account.  The password on the account has been locked down, but users need to be aware that some of these legitimate looking emails did leave the system.  Below is an example of one:

–BEGIN

–END

At the bottom of the message is a link to the “Abuse Report” which is actually a document containing a virus.   If you see one of these messages, please delete and ignore it.

Thank you.

December 7, 2018 – WordPress has released a major new update (version 5.0) and it is rolling out throughout the world.  As it turns out, we are finding that some sites may not be compatible with the new update and this is causing some site owners to see the “white screen of death” when accessing their web page.  This white page indicates a fatal error on the site and steps will need to be taken to modify the site so that it will again be functional.

Although we do monitor server functionality, we are unable to check each website and each page on the sites to verify they still function when an update like this occurs.  This is very similar to the issue we are currently working where the server operating systems themselves must be upgraded – also resulting in some older, unmaintained sites producing issues.   Our staff is going through sites today to try to locate any which are not functioning normally, but as a site owner, if you see issues, please contact us at support@internetpro.net to report it.   We will do our best to get your site online, although it may be possible that your website developer may need to be enlisted to restore full functionality.

One of the main highlights of this new WordPress release is a new editor which completely changes the page editing experience.  A WordPress-produced plugin is available called “Classic Editor” which will restore the old look/feel to your editor. However, this plugin is only going to be maintained until 2021, so it will be necessary to migrate to the new editor eventually.