System News This page contains news and announcements for users of Sound Internet. Check here regularly for the latest scoop on Sound Internet events and information. Webmail Upgraded Posted June 12, 2003 Last night after some testing and bug squashing our webmail interface has been updated. There should be no problems with all the major and important features, however those who make use of the program are encouraged to give notice of any problems they do encounter to our support staff. Web Hosting and DNS Maintenance Posted April 11, 2003 On Sunday, April 13 at 2 AM the commercial webserver superweb.scc.net will be brought down briefly for minor maintenence. This will be brief and will not affect general connectivity, and will last no longer than 10 minutes. At the same time work will be done on the DNS server used by our 56k dialup, ISDN, and DSL subscribers. This outage will cause things such as email and web pages to be temporarily unavailable but will only last 5 to 10 minutes. By 2:30 AM everything will be fully operational again. Generator Maintenance Posted February 24, 2003 Sound Internet's emergency generator will be offline during the morning hours of February 25, 2003 for scheduled maintenance. From 10am to 12 noon, the generator will be offline. We do not anticipate any power loss during this time. Qwest DSL Service Interruption for Minnesota Posted February 18, 2003 On the mornings of March 4th and March 5th, from 12:00am to 7:00am, Qwest will be performing network upgrades that will affect all Qwest DSL customers in the Twin Cities As a result of this maintanance, DSL customers will experience several brief service interruptions. Sound Internet's servers will not be impacted, only your access to the DSL service during the upgrades. No dialup, email or web services will be affected. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Qwest directly or send an e-mail to staff@scc.net DSL/IDSL Service Interruption Posted January 28, 2003 Today at approximately 3:00PM, an equipment failure occured on our ATM link which feeds our DSL customers. Qwest dispatched a technician to the central office where the ATM link is fed out of. We will post updates as they come in. UPDATE: DSL services have been restored. We will continue monitoring the link over the next few hours before closing the ticket with Qwest, but we are hopeful things are back to normal. If you have any questions, feel free to send an e-mail to staff@scc.net Connection Issues with AT&T Broadband Posted January 3, 2003 On December 30th we had recieved several complaints of AT&T Broadband customers not able to reach the SCC Network, we had narrowed the issue to routers between AT&T and one of our upstream providers. As of January 02, 2003 the issue has been resolved. Further information of this issue can be seen here. www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,5508039~root=attbi~ If you have any questions, feel free to send an e-mail to staff@scc.net Server Upgrades Posted September 20, 2002 At 11:59 PM on Saturday, September 21 we will be rebooting the following servers: sound superweb superweb2 dns During this time websites hosted at Sound Internet and outside our network, along with email, will be temporarily unavailable. These reboots are to implement security upgrades and the total outage should be no longer than 15 minutes. NOTICE: The server reboots went as expected and all services are now back up. SpamAssassin Tool Updated Posted September 3, 2002 The SpamAssassin Tool has been upgraded today to the latest version (2.40). This upgrade enhances the filtering capabilities of the tool and should provide for more reliable hits. If you encounter any issues, feel free to send an e-mail to staff@scc.net Customer Service Survey Posted September 2, 2002 In our continued pursuit of excellent customer service, we have developed a tool for you to rate us and leave feedback. It is located at http://survey.scc.net. If you encounter any issues, feel free to send an e-mail to staff@scc.net SpamAssassin Tool Updated Posted August 27, 2002 The SpamAssassin Tool has been upgraded this morning to the latest version (2.31). This upgrade enhances the filtering capabilities of the tool and should provide for more reliable hits. If you encounter any issues, feel free to send an e-mail to staff@scc.net Service Changes to ISDN Monthly Hours and DSL Services Using Dialup Posted July 8, 2002 Beginning July, 2002, non-dedicated ISDN services will include 250 hours online per month. The 50 hour increase has not affected our pricing structure. Additional hours over 250 will continue to be billed at $1 per hour. There is no cap on the number of hours over 250, so if you continue to go well over the included hours, it may be time to upgrade to dedicated service. Also starting this month, DSL accounts now include 5 hours per month for dialup access (previously DSL included 1 hour per month). Additional hours remain $1 per hour after the 5 hours is used up in any given month. Commercial Web Server Replacement - July 5, 2002 Posted July 5, 2002 We will be replacing one of our commercial web servers (for domain hosting) during the early morning hours on July 5, 2002. If your domain is hosted on this machine, you have been notified earlier this week via the email address we have on file for your account. During the replacement window of 4am-6amCST, access and resources on this server (known as superweb) will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes. Things should be up and running by 6am, however, we will continue to work out any issues that may arise. Customers are advised to visit their sites Friday morning and test any forms they may have. Sound Internet makes every attempt to ensure forms and the like are still functional after the move, however, due to the numbers of forms we will be unable to find and test each one. If you do find a problem, please email staff@scc.net right away, or call us at 651-999-0999. Please be sure to include the URL for the page or form in question. UPDATE, July 8, 2002: The web server upgrade/replacement was a success. So far, there have been a few forms that had issues, but were easily resolved once we were notified. Although we believe there should be no more conflicts, please notify us if you suspect otherwise. User Defined Spam Filtering Is Here Posted June 25, 2002 Sound Internet has just completed 'beta' testing a new method of filtering out SPAM and we are ready for everyone that is interested to begin using it. The product is called SpamAssassin. It works by scanning your incoming email and looking for key words, phrases, marks and other tell-tale signs of spam. For each 'hit', SpamAssassin assigns a numeric value. If the numeric value is X or above (7 or above is the default value), then the email is flagged as *****SPAM***** and can be dealt with accordingly. Once the email is flagged, you can either set up a filter of your own using your email client, or have it deleted right from the server. If using your own email client filters, simply direct all email with the subject beginning: *****SPAM***** to a junk folder (or trash). You are able to turn this feature on or off by logging into https://secure.scc.net/email with your username and password. This is also the page where you can customize SpamAssassin to delete messages from the server, set up auto blacklisting of email addresses/domains, or set up 'whitelists' for email that may be flagged as spam, but is not. More info and instructions can be found at www.scc.net/techsupport/spamassassin. PLEASE NOTE that SpamAssassin can and likely will occasionally flag a message as SPAM that is valid. SCC strongly recommends that you try out the filtering for a few weeks before setting up rules to auto delete flagged email. Using filters in your own email client is recommended as you can periodically browse through your designated spam directory and look for any valid emails. If you choose to use SpamAssassin filters and have it delete flagged mail, you are doing so at your own risk. Once a message is deleting, there is no way of retrieving it. It is a great tool to have, please use it responsibly. On another SPAM related note, Junk Mail is increasing everywhere. Although we don't have a way to completely tell how much junk mail is sent through our mail servers, we guesstimate that SPAM and SPAM attempts account for a quarter of our mail server traffic. Testing New USENET News Service Feed Beginning Today Posted March 28, 2002 Old News Server Name: news2.scc.net (Fed by: Slurp/Hypervine) New News Server Name: news.scc.net (Fed by: newsread.com) Today we are testing out a new USENET news provider. For those of you that frequent newsgroups, you may notice you will need to update your lists the first time you sign on with the new service. You may also notice that messages you have already read through and deleted will re-appear in your groups. This is a result of the change. We still are running the old news service at news2.scc.net if you wish to continue using that feed. However, we'd be greatful if you would let us know your thoughts, likes, and dislikes on the new vs. old news feed. Please drop us an email or call at 651-999-0999 Circuit Maintenance Scheduled, March 3, 2002 Posted February 21, 2002 On Sunday, March 3, 2002, one of our upstream carriers will be performing maintenance on our circuit between 2am-6am. Outage to this circuit should be approx. 1-2 minutes. Our router may become sluggish during this update as it calculates which of our other carriers is the best choice for your data. We do not anticipate a service outage because of our redundant network design. If you have any questions or concerns, please send us an email or call at 651-999-0999 Outlook Express 6 Attachment Filtering & Virus Security Posted December 6, 2001 In light of the numerous Outlook E-mail viruses going around we've added a new section to the tech support page focusing on filtering e-mail attachments and outlook express virus security. Click here to jump to the new instructions. Network Issues Posted November 16, 2001 Summary of this morning's events: 7:41am - Power outage at Minneapolis NOC, splitting our network into multiple parts 7:44am - BGP Announcements Network Wide are missing our 2nd largest network 209.32.128.0/19 7:49am - Management systems notify on call staff of outage, troubleshooting begins 8:11am - Router is reloaded in an attempt to fix BGP problem, Causes Qwest to take Frame-relay out of service 8:44am - BGP is found to have a software bug, and a work around fix is applied Most of network is functional 8:56am - NSP restores power to Minneapolis NOC 9:29am - Qwest restores Frame-relay service to St Paul connected frame customers Normally Minneapolis does not provide any services to customers other than those who dial the old modem numbers. Minneapolis will be completely removed from our network before the end of the year. The outage today was the result of a bug in the way our routers share connection information. Definitions: NOC - (Network Operations Center) BGP - (Boarder Gateway Protocol) A system to communication to multiple peers about the status of network connectivity, Used by all tier 1 providers to find the fastest and most reliable way to pass data in a multi-connected environment. Excel - Our electricity provider Frame-relay - A high speed data service used to transmit Internet connections to our largest customers Planned Maintenance Posted November 12, 2001 Thursday morning between 5am and 6am there will be a 20 minute window of downtime while four servers are rebooted for security fixes. The services affected will be: pop3 (incoming e-mail, you won't be able to check mail during this period) shell access (you will not be able to login to any of the servers involved during this time) linux webhosting (websites will be down during this period) webmail (access will be down during this period) dns (no named based web surfing during this period) Servers Involved: sound.scc.net superweb.scc.net superweb2.scc.net dns.scc.net If you have questions or concerns please e-mail us at staff@scc.net New Mail and Shell Server Online Posted October 15, 2001 Over the weekend, we replaced our main mail and shell server with a newer and faster server. It has been thoroughly tested, but should you find an issue or conflict, please email staff@scc.net with a detailed description of the problem. So far, all looks well and no occurrences have been reported. New Nimda Worm Out Affecting Microsoft OS Posted September 18, 2001 A new worm named Nimda affecting Microsoft has hit the internet this morning. It appears to be an email attachment that takes advantage of unpatched exploits in the operating system. It appears to be affecting Microsoft clients, web servers and mail servers. More information can be found at slashdot.org or cert.org and from McAfee & Norton Yet Another New T3 Is Online! Posted August 28, 2001 We are happy to announce that we've just turned on a new T3 through Genuity this afternoon. Our latest bandwidth addition will further increase our redundancy and add more speed to our Internet connectivity. It is blazing fast and will allow us to expand even more to meet the needs of our customers. This addition marks our 4th high-speed connection to the Internet. Hardware Failure Posted August 25, 2001 This afternoon, our Minneapolis POP, 612-252-2525 (includes Chisago Dialup, Wisconsin Dialup) experienced a power outage resulting in line failures. During this time, users calling into these areas would have not been able to connect. At/around the same time, we experienced a hardware failure on our core Cisco router in Saint Paul. Coincidence? We're not sure yet. During this time we had to take our router offline to test/remove the defective card and nearly everyone would have experienced problems (around the 3-4pm time frame). We urge anyone in the Metro calling area that is still dialing into 612-252-2525, to change their number to 651-556-6556. If you are outside the calling area, please do not change anything unless you don't mind incurring long distance charges. At this time, we have found a workaround until our replacement hardware is delivered. We have been arduously working since the issue began and will continue to do so until everyone is back up. ALL dialup users should now be up and running. We are still working on a few of our T1 customers and hope to have that workaround finished before too long. If anyone is interested, the hardware failure was a Cisco 8 port T1 card that fed our high-speed T1 customers. Thanks for your support and understanding. Qwest Midwest CO Outage Posted August 24, 2001 On the morning of August 24th, from 2-4am, Qwest's Midway CO in St. Paul lost battery power severing communications across the city. The Minneapolis data center was unaffected, however our St. Paul data center was down. Modem Bank Maintenance Posted August 24, 2001 On the morning of August 27th, from 6-6:10am, there will be maintenance on our St Paul modem bank (651-556-6556). There should be no more than ten minutes of downtime during this period. RAID and System Backups Saved the Day for Microsoft Hosted Websites Posted August 17, 2001 Sound Internet is thankful today to have made the investment in RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) to protect the data on its Microsoft Web server this afternoon. After a hard drive failure, we were able to recover all data and have the system back up in no time. All websites hosted on the Microsoft server were back up and running after a few hours. Although it only affected 6 websites (it is a new server), we were happy that we took the extra time when building it to make it a redundant server. Busy Day at Sound Internet! Posted August 1, 2001 Sound Internet has always believed in redundancy in our network design, and today at 10:30 it paid off. This morning the City of Saint Paul, while repairing our streets, dug a little bit deeper than anyone had planned and severed our fiber optic connections to the Internet and our DSL customers. Fortunately our redundancy prevented our entire network from failing. While the line was being repaired, Sound Internet continued to operate high-speed connections, dialup, email, and web hosting without interruption. Only our DSL customers were affected. At Sound Internet we believe in Customer Service and Reliable Networks! While it has been a very busy day, our overall time to answer phones has been as fast as ever and we are here to help you. BACK UP. At just before 4:30PM today, Qwest had successfully repaired the cut fiber line. Our T3 and DSL ATM link are now back up and functioning. If you are still experiencing problems, you are probably affected by the Code Red worm. Please read on for info on putting the worm issue to rest. Security message about DSL or Microsoft servers Posted July 30, 2001 The CodeRed worm & variants that disrupted DSL and Microsoft web servers last week are expected to reactivate on the first of the month. The original worm was intended to attack Microsoft NT and 2000 servers. The worms also exploit a bug in the web admin tool in the Cisco 675/678s regardless if you have it turned on or not. Unplugging the power for a moment and then reconnecting it will restore your DSL connection until your router is attacked again by the worms. Sound Internet staff is prepared to upgrade modems with a permanent fix if they are delivered to our office this week. No appointment is necessary, but a courtesy call would be appreciated. Our offices are open 9-6pm M-F. The upgrade takes about 15 minutes. If you have any questions or concerns feel free to e-mail us at staff@scc.net or call at 651-999-0999. You can prevent down time on your DSL by entering the following commands into your Cisco 675/678. For PC: Open Hypterminal Create Session Select Communications Port Port Settings: 38400 (not bits per second) Flow Control: None Click OK You should see a screen with either a flashing cursor or "Password:" prompt. Hit ENTER a few times. cbos> en (enter password if you specified one or just hit enter) cbos# set web disabled cbos# set web port 53496 cbos# write cbos# reboot Done! For Mac: Open ZTerm Select Settings Select Connection Data Rate: 38400 Data Bits: 8 Parity: None Stop Bits: 1 Flow Control: None You should see a screen with either a flashing cursor or a "Password:" prompt. Hit ENTER a few times. cbos> en (enter password if you specified one or just hit enter) cbos# set web disabled cbos# set web port 53496 cbos# write cbos# reboot Done! "CODE RED" Virus Alert Posted July 19, 2001 Please be alerted that a virus is causing intermittent disruption to many servers on the Internet network today and has impacted Web sites hosted on several Microsoft servers on the SCC network. As many of you may know, 95% of our servers are UNIX and remain unaffected. The majority of the infected servers on the SCC network are owned by customers that run their servers through or on our network. The Code Red virus attacks Microsoft IIS Web Servers by exploiting a buffer overrun. Microsoft does have a patch available. This virus scanning activity may also cause cisco 675 and 678 routers with web management enabled to lock up. Additional routers, including 2500 and 7500 series routers, are suffering memory problems. Any router, firewall or switch with a web-based interface may be suffering under this attack. It is recommended that all web-based configuration interfaces be disabled, and all IIS servers be patched with the latest updates from Microsoft. CERT Report on virus This may affect Cisco DSL routers that have the web interface enabled, but is a separate issue from the Qwest ATM (DSL) network problem. Qwest Having DSL Issues Posted July 19, 2001 Qwest appears to be having issues with their ATM backbone. This is affecting a great number of DSL customers throughout the area with external routers, regardless of ISP. At the time that we talked to Qwest, it was not clear what was causing the problem, nor did they have an estimated time of when it would be fixed. At this time, the best solution we have is to continually power cycle your router (unplug it for 30 seconds, then plug in again). Thank you for your patience! UPDATE at 3PM 7-19-2001 Qwest is having issues in all 14 states they service dsl in at this time. They still are unaware of what is happening, and there is still no estimated time that it will be fixed (a couple hours one rep said). UPDATE at 430PM 7-19-2001 Still no resolution or estimated time for a fix. Qwest's dsl support number has been replaced with an automated announcement. The announcement will change if any new information comes available. The number again is 800-247-7285 if you want the latest information. UPDATE 545PM 7-19-2001 Qwest continues to work on the issue. Upcoming "Tech Talk" - July 11 Posted June 26, 2001 On Wednesday, July 11, we will be having our first "Tech Talk." The topic will be combating SPAM with a special focus on procmail. Please RSVP if you are interested, as seating is limited. The talk will begin at 4:00pm, followed by a Q&A session. For more information, check out http://www.scc.net/techtalk SPAM! Interesting Article Posted May 25, 2001 Interesting article about the endless battle with SPAM Upstream Provider Outage Posted May 14, 2001 Today we experienced 50% packet loss due to one of our upstream providers having trouble with their network. This outage caused problems getting to certain sites on the Internet and lag for some customers. The outage lasted about 2 hours, but has been resolved at this point in time. Router Software Issues Posted May 10, 2001 Over the past few days, we have been experiencing unexplained reboots on our core router. This has affected most Internet services. Earlier today, Cisco discovered a bug in the version of IOS software SCC was using. We have installed the upgrade and plan on putting the new software into effect either this evening, or automatically during the next crash. We apologize for any inconvience this may cause you. Modem Bank Maintenance Posted May 1, 2001 On the morning of May 2nd, from 3-5am, there will be maintenance on our St Paul modem bank (651-556-6556). There should be no more than a half hour of downtime during this period. Open House Posted April 23, 2001 We'd like to invite you to our open house on Friday, May 4 from 12 noon to 7pm. We will have BBQ's, refreshments, appetizers and door prizes. Please stop by to see our newly remodeled facilities and meet the staff. We look forward to seeing you! Scheduled Downtime Posted April 23, 2001 On Wednesday, April 25 between the hours of 3AM and 6AM, we are moving the remaining servers from our Minneapolis office to our Saint Paul office. The server that will affect everyone is the POP3 (when you check your email) server. During a fraction of this three hour time window, all mail being sent or received to your account will still be delivered, however, you will not be able to check your email during this time. Also affected will be all members that continue to dial into the 612-252-252X phone numbers, the X2 phone number (612-813-4542) and finally the analog number of 612-871-7886. This analog line will be discontinued in the next week or so. The few users still calling this phone number please use 651-556-6556. Scheduled Downtime Posted April 4, 2001 There is a downtime scheduled for Friday, April 6th, at 2AM for DNS server updates. While we have set a one-hour window for this downtime, we expect the Internet to only be unavailable for a maximum of 15 minutes. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you. New Dialup Phone Number 651-556-6556 Ready Posted March 27, 2001 Our new dialup phone number in Saint Paul is ready for round two of testing. We're confident you will see immediate improvements in connection quality. We would like to ask all of our customers to give the new service a try. Recent beta testing has shown the lines and equipment are functioning perfectly. We have replaced our terminal servers (Lucent Portmasters) with Cisco hardware and are confident that the new number is ready for use. 95% of our customers will need to only change the telephone number on their dialup settings. We expect fewer than 5% of users may experience problems. Mainly with users still using Windows 3.1, or anyone that connects using a login script, will be the people affected. If you do not have windows 3.1, or do not use a log in script but still are experiencing problems, please drop an email to staff@scc.net and we will determine what changes should be made. Again this should affect fewer than 5% of our customers. The old lines will not go away without you. The NEW phone number is 651-556-6556. It is a local call within the Twin Cities calling area. Customers outside the metro calling area should NOT change their dialup number and should continue dialing the number assigned in their local area. (Sound Internet is not responsible for long distance charges accrued on your phonebill.) If you are a DSL customer, you do not need to change any settings. We will maintain the 612-252-2525 phone number until we have everyone moved over to the new service. For instructions on changing your dialup settings, please visit: Windows 95/98 -------------------- http://www.scc.net/techsupport/newdialup Macintosh -------------------- http://www.scc.net/techsupport/newdialup/changenumbermac.html Welcome Scott Larson! Posted March 19, 2001 Sound Internet would like to welcome its newest employee, Scott Larson. Scott is a fulltime employee with a lot of experience and he's just generally nifty-keen. We're excited to welcome him to our team! Scheduled News Service Maintenance 2/5/2001 4:00AM to 6:00AM Posted January 27, 2001 Our upstream news feed will be performing maintenance on their servers on February 5th, beginning at 4am and scheduled to last no more than 2 hours. Mandatory Ten Digit Dialing Posted January 13, 2001 Please keep in mind that January 14 marks the beginning of the new 763 and 952 areacodes in the metro area and mandatory ten digit dialing. Remember to update your dialers to dial the 612 areacode before our modem line if you're in the new areacode. See http://www.scc.net/techsupport/areacode/ for more information. Internet Instability Posted January 13, 2001 Sound Internet has been busy the past 24 hours. An interoffice data facility was having instability issues which caused intermittent interruptions in Internet service. Working with Qwest Communications, we were able to resolve the issue and things should be running smoothly now. Welcome back Karyn Berg, We sure did miss ya! Posted December 2, 2000 Karyn Berg has come back to work part-time with us during the busy Christmas season and possibly on. Karyn does her job with ease and is as familiar with our operations as anyone, so we were very happy to see her back with us. She's still got the same email address if you want to drop her a message, Karyn@SCC.Net. Welcome to our staff Andy Hafferman Posted December 1, 2000 Welcome Andy Hafferman! Our staff has grown by one. Andy Hafferman joined us in December. Andy is a student who is an avid gamer and talented HTML/graphics/web designer. His part-time employment has already brought us some revised web pages and logos. We are anxious to see what he'll come up with next... Send email to Andy for more information. Welcome to our staff Chris Luhman Posted October 26, 2000 Welcome Chris Luhman! We are happy to announce our newest staff member Chris Luhman. Chris is a nifty Linux user and also an MCSE, who will be providing customer support and helping maintain our servers (UNIX and Windows alike). Chris is excellent with scripts and other goodies. Currently, he's working on a new method of website log analysis which is up for all domains in Beta testing. Email Chris for more information. Half of dialup lines out of service Dialup Customers Posted September 10, 2000 Sunday, Sept. 10, 72 of our dialup lines in the main modem pool went out of service due to a problem with our telephone carrier. The problem was reported to us around 3pm and a ticket was placed with our carrier shortly after. The situation did not come under control until about 11:30pm that evening. Our apologies for the inconvenience. Unscheduled Downtime, Power "Brown out" Posted August 9, 2000 Sound Internet's Minneapolis data center experienced a power brown out this evening. Unlike a normal power outage, the electricity did not go completely out. This prevented our staff from receiving an emergency notification so that we can insure our generator has started. We were unaware of the problem until our own internet services quit at home. Once we understood the problems, someone was dispatched to manually start our generator. NSP arrived shortly after and replaced fuses in the alley behind our building. All services have been restored at this time. The outage began at 8:10pm and service was restored by 9pm. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Scheduled News Server Maintenance 5/8/2000 4:00AM to 5:00AM Posted May 5, 2000 Our upstream news feed will be performing maintenance on their servers during the date and time as follows. Maintenance Date: 05/08/2000 Maintenance Time: From: 04:00AM CDT To: 05:00AM CDT Duration: 30 minutes, with a max of 1 hour More on the "Love Bug" email virus and what Sound Internet has done to prevent you from being affected May 4, 2000 Sound Internet has filtered out the I Love You virus from entering our email servers. We have also began blocked email from a known origin. Mail services were disrupted for about 45 seconds while the filter rules were added. We will keep you posted on any further developments if needed. For more information on what this virus does, read the CERT Newsletter on the Love Bug Virus. The new "I Love You" email virus alert! May 4, 2000 We have just been alerted by one of our customers of yet another email virus called the "I Love You" message, or better known as the "Love Bug". If you have received this email message, DO NOT OPEN IT, DELETE it right away. As with any attachment, if you aren't expecting it, don't open it. If you would like more info on virus detection, visit the McAfee Software and Symantec Software websites for virus protection/prevention information and software. SCC on the News! May 3, 2000 Be sure to check out Channel 9 News at 9pm on Sunday, May 7. They are doing a story on Internet services and we expect our own Eric Osterberg to be featured that evening! SCC has new InterNIC Service May 1, 2000 SCC has recently become a Internet domain name registrar, much like Network Solutions. You can now register your domains with Sound Internet and we will save you $10 per year. Network Solutions currently charges $35 per year per domain, but we are charging $25/year/domain. We have also slashed our DNS server configuration fee in half for all new domains registered via Sound Internet's InterNIC service (now $25 instead of $50). You can now park domains without paying the DNS server setup fee if you will not be using them. You do not have to be a customer of Sound Internet to register your domains through us, so tell your friends and family. To register, check out http://register.scc.net. New T3 April 30, 2000 On Sunday, April 30, 2000, one of our new T3's went live at our new Network Operations Center (NOC) in St. Paul. Yet another T3 is being planned for later this year. Our first T3 is connected to the USWest ATM network throughout the Twin Cities. We are very excited to be connected via ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and are looking forward to tremendous success with this type of network architecture. It is one of the methods that is leading the future. iDSL is Now Available April 17, 2000 Sound Internet can now support iDSL via USWest. iDSL is for USWest customers that do not qualify for DSL at their home or business because of distance issues. A more expensive service on the USWest side (not SCC), iDSL allows for 144k Internet connections. For more info, you can check out our iDSL page at http://www.scc.net/products/idsl. DSL Downtime April 22, 2000 On Saturday afternoon, beginning about 1:45pm, there was a DSL outage. It took USWest three hours to isolate the problem and an hour after that to locate the replacement parts. The problem was caused by a faulty patch cord between the fiber loop converter and the digital cross connect located in the USWest Central Office in the Midway area of St Paul. There is a scheduled downtime for Tuesday, April 25, from 4am to 6am so that USWest may install a permanent replacement for the part. Busy Tuesday for Sound Internet April 18, 2000 Tuesday morning didn't go too smoothly for our valiant Sound Internet technical staff. There was a local power failure at 9:45 a.m. in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis where our main dialup modems and DNS Servers are located. Although the power failure persisted for over 2 1/2 hours, Sound Internet continued running for 100 minutes from battery before obtaining a backup power generator. We were unable to prevent downtime by just 3 minutes due to trouble connecting the generator to the emergency power systems. Overall we're very happy with outcome which could have been much worse without the necessary emergency equipment. Peak business hour power failures can be catastrophic to our commercial clients (and even our internet-addicted personal subscribers). We appreciate that while the Internet is not yet perfect, many businesses depend on reliable access. This was the first time we had the opportunity to use our emergency power backup plan, and we're glad to report that it worked well. We regret the service outage, but we also appreciate all the calls and e-mails from affected subscribers who were impressed by our ability to quickly re-establish services even in the absence of electricservice. Again, our apologies to any of you who were inconvenienced by this outage. Now that we've done this once, we look forward to restoring service even more quickly in the aftermath of any future power outages. Eric Osterberg, Network Administrator DSL Downtime Scheduled April 10, 2000 At 12:01am on Thursday, April 13th, Sound Internet and USWest will begin migrating our DSL customers to our new DS-3 carrier line. Neither USWest or Sound Internet expects the cutover to take all night, but we are told to provide a window until 8am on the morning of Thursday, April 13th. The purpose of this downtime and the new DS-3 circuit is all part of a major fiber optic upgrade we've been planning over the last year. The new circuits will provide much much more bandwidth for both our DSL service and internet connections. After 8am, everything should be back to normal. We are trying to make this as painless as possible for you and noone should have to make any changes to their configurations unless otherwise notified. Web-based Email is Here March 20, 2000 Now Sound Internet subscribers can check their e-mail from anywhere in the world without the hassle of reconfiguring Internet set-ups or having to make long-distance connections. Where ever you are, night or day, you can go to http://webmail.scc.net or to https://webmail.scc.net (for the secure version) to get your e-mail messages. Enter your username and password and Voila! you have mail. Here at Sound Internet, life just keeps getting better! We Have a Winner! March 15, 2000 The winner of last month's drawing for three months free basic service is Jim Linehan of Taylors Falls. Congratulations to Jim and thanks to all who entered the drawing. SCC Links Up With Its Fifth National Provider March 10, 2000 Ever wonder why your Internet connection with Sound Internet is so much speedier than your friends' connections? One reason is that Sound Internet maintains low bandwith ratio for customers -- one of the reasons why we can brag that your downloads will be quick when you're logged on. Sound Internet now has five global network connections to the Internet. We're growing to meet your needs. The History of Fiber (pt. 1) March 1, 2000 Sometimes we here at Sound Internet wonder if our subscribers understand just how much work goes into being one of the best medium-sized ISPs in the upper Midwest. Our new fiber lines, for example, give us the capacity to handle a far greater volume of individual and business customers. But, with the Internet, as with any new technology, knowing what you want isn't the same as getting what you want. In July 1999, Sound Internet put in an order for new fiber optic lines with USWest. A month rolled by before the order was accepted and a due date of November 3 was given to Sound Internet by USWest. Late in October a USWest team inspected the Sound Internet site and told us what we needed to do before November 3. All we had to do was to quick run out, get a manhole cover installed and find a work crew with directional boring equipment. This was accomplished before November 3. Unfortunately, USWest then told us that we couldn't get hooked up due to "seasonal" issues. We were persistent, the weather cooperated, and, after only an additional two months, the needed conduit was layed and fused. This left just a few technical details and more USWest paperwork to be cleaned up and, as of March 14, Sound Internet has -- in just eight short months -- gotten its own fiber optic lines installed. So the next time one of your friends on AOL complains about not getting an answer when they dial in, just remember to be glad you chose Sound Internet for your Internet connection needs. (And remember, friends don't let friend's sign up with AOL!) New Minneapolis Area Codes Take Effect February 27, 2000 The region served by Minnesota's 612 area code has been split up into three prefixes: 612, 763, and 952. For more information on this, and how to update your modem settings to reflect the change, check out our area code techsupport page on this issue. DSL Expands to Richfield January 24, 2000 DSL is finally hitting the Richfield area after many delays and much anticipation. Check out our DSL page for information on pricing, or give us a call today to get your high-speed Internet access. New T1 Install and Future Upgrades January 20, 2000 On January 20, we installed another T1, which brings our total up to four incoming T1s, not to mention our expanded outbound capabilities. This same day, we also installed a new Cisco 7200 series router which will do everything, including sing and dance! We were very excited to get it up and running. We also have other things in store for the very near future: We're nearing completion with the construction of our fiber network to our future NOC here in St Paul. We will have 2 T3's turned up right away and our future involves direct fiber routes to downtown Minneapolis, then downtown St Paul. We're also constructing our NOC facilities in a space four times as large as the current NOC in Minneapolis. The expansion is all part of a major facilities upgrade we expect to have completed by the end of the year. Y2K Bug Didn't Bite! January 1, 2000 Things at Sound Internet went over quite smoothly New Years Eve. Our servers run on Greenwich Mean Time, which was 6pm here. Once the clocks rolled over to 6pm, we were confident that Y2K would go off without a hitch. Hope yours was a happy and safe one! Check here for older news...
		(c) Copyright 1995-2003 - Sound Choice/Sound Internet 2375 University Avenue West, Suite 120 Saint Paul, MN 55114 651 999-0999 voice - 651 644-7990 fax