News and Updates

March 5, 2015 – Due to a winter weather warning and deteriorating conditions, the offices of Network Solutions, Inc. are closing early (1:00pm) today.  Phone support will still be available by calling 256-547-6817 and pressing 8.   Email support will also be available at support@internetpro.net.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please check back here for updates on whether the office will open on time tomorrow, March 6.

Update – March 6, 2015: Our office will be open for our regular office hours today.

February 25, 2015 – Due to a winter weather warning and deteriorating conditions, the offices of Network Solutions, Inc. are closing early (12:00pm) today.  Phone support will still be available by calling 256-547-6817 and pressing 8.   Email support will also be available at support@internetpro.net.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please check back here for updates on whether the office will open on time tomorrow, February 26.

Update – February 26: Due to the very significant weather event and roads in the area which have been deemed impassible, our office will remain closed today.

Update – February 27:  Our office will be resuming normal business hours today.

Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2015:  A critical vulnerability has been found in most Linux operating systems including the distributions we use for all web hosting, email services, and backups.  This vulnerability, nicknamed “Ghost”, is outlined in this article.  We have already patched all servers, but this particular bug requires a reboot of the servers for the fix to take effect.   Therefore, we are scheduling an emergency maintenance window for Thursday the 29th from 12:00am – 3:00am CST (this is Wednesday night into Thursday morning) to perform reboots of all systems affected.   During this time, all services will beaffected at some point.  We do not expect any service to be down for the entire window.

Update:  Maintenance completed as of 2:20am.   All services are functioning normally and the Ghost vulnerability has been patched on all servers.

If you have any questions or concerns about this maintenance, please contact us at support@internetpro.net or 256-547-6817.

December 23, 2014 – 12:00pm – We experienced a thunderstorm at our datacenter which caused a short power failure.  Unfortunately, we had one UPS system fail for that outage and it affected several VPS machines.  It also affected our monitoring system, so we were unaware of the outage on some  hosts.   This did impact our response time, and some machines were out for about 45 minutes.   All systems are currently back up or are in the process of coming online now.

We do apologize for any trouble this may have caused.   We will be doing an investigation into the UPS failure in a scheduled maintenance window as it will likely cause a small amount of downtime for some hosts when it is checked/replaced.

December 9, 2014 – 11:35am – The new mail server system is live.  We are still moving some of the more recent emails over to the new server, but things are coming online.  Please bear with us while this change happens!   Also, don’t forget to check out the informational post here for more background on what is going on.

Update:  Customers may see some older email come in again and may see some of their recent email disappear.  The recent email will come back shortly.  The old email is email that has been deleted since we synchronized the mailbox.   We have a LOT of data and mailboxes to sync so it is impossible to do them at one time.  There will be some time difference between the migration and they sync and changes made to the mailbox during that time may revert.  You should not LOSE any email – worst case is that you get email again that you have already dealt with.   This is a necessary evil but will pass shortly.

Update 2: We have determined that there is an issue with customers who have “aliased domains”.  This occurs when there two or more domain names which point to the same mailbox.  For instance, user@domain1.com and user@domain2.com are the same account.  Some companies own multiple domains and set up this type of arrangement.   If your company does this, you may have trouble authenticating to receive your email.   We are currently working to fix this issue.

Update 3:   The issue mentioned in Update 2 above should be fixed.   If you are seeing authentication problems, please let us know by calling 256-547-6817.   You should NOT be receiving “bad password” errors.

 Update 4: We do know that the webmail address books did not make the migration to the new server.  This was a known issue which we mentioned on this post.   Please let us know if you need us to help move your address book for you.

Update 5:  It has come to our attention that some Apple devices (iPhones and iPads) using IMAP did not automatically resume working as most devices did (everything else).   This has to do with the nonstandard way that Apple handles folder subscriptions.  The fix is to remove the IMAP account from the device and set it up again.

November 24, 2014 – 1:45pm – Comcast is experiencing a large outage in the Gadsden area.  It seems to be a non-local event so it is affecting the entire area.   We have made contact with Comcast, and they do not currently have an accurate estimated time to repair (ETR).  Right now, we just have the generic automatic ETR of 5:56pm.   We’ll be posting updates here as quickly as we get them.

Our phones were also affected by this event, but we have now rerouted our voice traffic so our phones are back up.   We are returning calls as quickly as possible.

 Update 3:25pm –  No real update we’re afraid.  Repeated calls to Comcast reveal that the issue is still unknown.   The estimated time to repair remains the initially generated time of 5:56pm.  For a nice map detailing the nationwide issues Comcast is experiencing, go here:  https://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity/map/

Update 3:50pm – It looks like Comcast has come back up and has been stable for about 10 minutes.   Hopefully, the outage is over.

November 18, 2014 – We are preparing for a complete overhaul of our email system which is going to bring a lot of great new features!  We will be making a detailed announcement outlining the new features soon.  In the mean time, we are having to do some work on the existing mail server system to prepare for the migration to the new system.   This in conjunction with the large volume of email being processed daily, is causing some delays in email delivery.   We are aware of the issue and and are trying to minimize it, but it cannot be eliminated right now.   The existing mail hardware is getting a little long in the tooth and that is also contributing to the delays.   Please bear with us as we work to modernize and improve the email system.

We think you’ll be really happy with the new system, as it will be bringing several things like:

• Improved webmail
• Improved spam settings and filters including user-specific settings and templates
• Improved speed
• Many other features which we will be announcing shortly

We do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience as we work to bring you improved services.

The Comcast circuit at our office went down at approximately 7:10 PM affected some services and the downtown area of Gadsden. Technicians responded to the outage and arrived onsite shortly after to begin troubleshooting the issue. After working with Comcast support we were notifed that the outage was due to a failed node in the Comcast backbone and were given an ETA to repair for 11:12 PM. Currently our monitoring systems have notified us that the circuit is back online and all services have been restored as of 8:24 PM. We will continue to monitor the circuit and will post any updates.