News and Updates

We just applied a minor update to our webmail interface.  The new update includes several fixes and enhancements.

• Internet Explorer compatibility fixes
• Added separate From and To columns apart from smart From/To? column
• Add vCard import from multiple files at once
• Add mail attachments using drag & drop on HTML5 enabled browsers
• Added “Undeleted” option to messages list filter
• Add option to enable HTML editor on forwarding
• Add option to disable saving sent mail in Sent folder – no_save_sent_messages
• Add user settings to open message view and compose form in new windows
• Support contacts import from CSV file
• Add Compose button on message view page
• Display PGP/MIME signature attachments as “Digital Signature”
• Add search box to compose address book widget
• Many security fixes
• Many other usability fixes

If you have any questions or issues, please contact us at support@internetpro.net.

We are going to be implementing important upgrades on one of our NAS (Network Attached Storage) systems which handles some virtual machines.  This maintenance will be performed during our maintenance window of 12:00am – 3:00am on May 25, 2013.  During this time, some customer websites and hosted VPS (virtual private servers) will be unavailable.   We will be taking advantage of the downtime to implement updates requiring reboots such as kernel upgrades.

These upgrades will significantly increase disk speed on virtual machines, and will also improve reliability of the system.

If there are any questions regarding this maintenance, please contact us at support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.\

Update: This maintenance has been completed ahead of schedule.  All customer services are functioning nominally.

We just finished getting the newest edition to our fleet wrapped and ready to go!   It is a new Fiat 500 and we think it adds a new and distinct look to our fleet.  We designed the wrap to look much like our current Ford Transit  Connect vans.  Much of the time, our technicians don’t need a full van to bring the equipment they need onsite, so the smaller car gives us the option of improved gas mileage and efficiency to help reduce our costs which help us keep down our customers’ costs.

So, keep an eye out for us on the road and keep us in mind for all of your computer needs!

Comcast has a node outage in downtown Gadsden.  The outage is affecting about 300-500 of their customers. It is also affecting our phone system so our support lines are down.  However, our failover system is still functional so messages left on the system will receive be received by our technicians. As of 3:30pm Comcast’s estimated  time to repair (ETR) is 7:00pm.

We will continue to post updates online here as we receive them. Our support staff can also be reached by emailing us at support@internetpro.net.

UPDATE May 12, 2013 4:00PM – The issue seems to have been resolved for now. We will post additional updates as we receive them from Comcast

We have had several questions about an increase in spam in customer’s mailboxes.   There has been a LARGE increase in spam messages on the internet lately.  According to Cisco, the average daily volume of spam in January 2013 was 77.4 billion messages.  As of yesterday, the volume was 165.6 billion messages.  Spam now constitutes 86.7% of all email sent on the internet.

Although our spam tagging system is in great working order, the fact is that a certain percentage of spam does get through.  This is unfortunately an issue that is difficult to change because the more strict we make the filters, the more likely it will be that we will catch legitimate email (false positives).   We believe that we have a good balance of blocked, tagged, and delivered email now.  We are blocking or tagging about 98% of the email that comes into our system.   However, if the volume coming into the system doubles, so will the number of spams that get through.

We take spam very seriously and do our best to limit our customer’s exposure to it.  We just wanted to update you on the current state of spam delivery and blocking.  We hope that you can understand that no email system (at least as currently designed) can block 100% of spam with 100% accuracy, but we do our best to get as close to that goal as possible.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at support@internetpro.net.

Yahoo.com is currently deferring emails coming from our mail servers.  A deferral is a temporary failure which they have put in place due to excessive user complaints about spam.  We tracked down the issue to a user’s email account which had the password compromised and was being used to send spam through our servers.  We have disabled the account in question and hope to see Yahoo! lift the deferrals soon.   Email sent to Yahoo! accounts right now will not be delivered immediately, but instead will sit in a queue until Yahoo! starts accepting them.  If the message is not delivered for four hours, you will receive a notification of delay.  Only after five days will the message be permanently rejected.  We don’t expect this issue to hit the five day mark, but if it did, you would receive another notification of the permanent rejection.

We do apologize for the inconvenience and we are working with Yahoo! to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.  Updates will be posted here as always.

Update: 10:30am – We have rerouted our email destined for yahoo.com through another network. This will get the messages delivered, but it does have the side effect that domains with SPF (most of ours) *may* have their email delivered to Yahoo! users’ junk folder.   However, the email will at least get to the intended recipient.  This rerouting should also help get our servers off of the “deferral” list at Yahoo!.

Update: 10:45am – Well, Yahoo! has blocked our other relay server as well now.   Our queue probably had some spam in it as we did not want to delete any legitimate email.  When we forwarded it all through another server, Yahoo! put that one on their list.   The good news is that all of the “bad” email should be out of our queue which should allow Yahoo! to quickly remove our main servers from their list.

Update 4/21/2013 – The server we are relaying Yahoo! messages through has been dropped off of their block list, so the Yahoo! emails are going through.  However, our primary server is still on the list, so we are still working on the problem. Unfortunately, Yahoo! seems to be “trigger happy” on blocking spam this week AND some of the links on their site which are used for correcting these type of issues are broken, so it is slow going…

Update 4/21/2013  5:30pm – We had a problem with the rerouting of the email that caused some failures to be delivered back.  These emails are permanent failures and will not be retried. The failure notice will let you know if that is the case.  That issue has been corrected and the email is again flowing to Yahoo!.

Update 4/21/2013 11:00pm – We also had to reroute email for the sbcglobal.net domain as they subcontract with Yahoo!. Email for that domain should be working now.

Update 4/22/2013 5:00pm  – Yahoo! is still deferring email sent directly to them, but our secondary server we are using to reroute to them is still working, so email is still flowing normally.  We will continue to update this page as things change.

Update 4/23/2013 7:45am – The block from Yahoo! has been lifted.  We are leaving our “rerouting” of the email in place for a few more hours just to make sure everything is OK.  We should return the routing to normal sometime today.

Update 4/26/2013 7:45am – It looks like everything is still progressing OK with Yahoo!.  This issue has been closed.

We are experiencing some trouble with our phone lines at the moment.  We are not able to dial out from our office, and some people dialing in are receiving a message that says “You have reached a non-working number.”  The issue seems to be related to our 256-547-6817 and 256-547-6868 numbers.

If you need to get in touch with us, please call our toll free number 877-886-6868 as an alternate number or email us at support@internetpro.net.

We apologize for any inconvenience and are working with our telephone provider to rectify the issue.

Update: 1:00pm – We are now able to dial out from our office.  We’ve been informed that the issue has to do with Verizon, who carries our voice traffic.   Our outgoing calls have been routed through a different carrier now.   Our 877-886-6868 comes in over a different carrier as well, so it is still working too.

Update: 3:15pm – We’ve been notified that the problems with Verizon have been resolved.  We have received a few calls so it seems to be working.  If you have trouble, try our 877 number – 877-886-6868 but be sure to let us know you had problems if you are calling in. Thanks!

We’ve had some reports of email being delayed or not getting delivered at all today.   During our first tests, we were not able to reproduce the issue.  However, we have now been able to and the issue is resolved.

The problem had to do with the Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which we support.  You can find out more about SPF at Wikipedia.  In a nutshell, SPF helps reduce spam by making it harder for spammers to hijack email domains.

The best practices for setting up SPF is to trust a list produced by The Trusted Forwarder Global Whitelist (www.trusted-forwarder.org) which provides a global whitelist for SPF users. It provides a way of allowing legitimate email that is sent through known, trusted email forwarders from being blocked by SPF checks because the forwarders do not use some sort of envelope-from rewriting system.

Unfortunately, the trusted-forwarder.org domain is failing to resolve today.  We do not know what the issue is, but their DNS servers are reporting SERVFAIL.  This was causing our SPF system to report “Bad SPF Record” and to reject email with a temporary error.  A temporary error means that the email delivery attempts will continue for up to 5 days in the hopes that the problem will be resolved.

We have removed the trusted-forwarder.org lookups from our system, and therefore have eliminated the temporary failures.  Email that has been delayed is beginning to be delivered now.

Note: This issue ONLY affected domains without a valid SPF record.  That is why we were not able to replicate it at first, as all of the domains we tested with had SPF properly setup.

If there are any questions or concerns, please email us at support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.

Monday, March 18, 2013 – The storms that came through have brought some havoc with them.  In our area, cellular service is very spotty right now.  We believe the cell networks are overloaded because of so many IP phones being down.  Comcast has MANY customers down in the Gadsden area as does Alabama Power.   Our datacenter experienced several power failures, but our UPS and generator systems operated as designed and we experienced no issues to service.

Elsewhere in town, many business networks are down because of power surges and failures.  We at Network Solutions, Inc. will be working diligently to restore operations to our customers as quickly as we can.  We do appreciate your patience as we try to address the needs of the community in a timely manner.

We are also offering access to our annex building for customers who do not have power and are unable to get their systems up and running.  Our annex has a 50Mbit internet connection, wireless, power, etc.   We can move your server and (at least some) workstations to our office to get you up and running to maintain business continuity.  Just give us a call if you need us at 256-547-6817!