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. Back to newer news... New DSL Router October 1, 1999 Sound Internet is pleased to announce that we have recently replaced our DSL ATM router with a newer and faster one. We have been waiting for a couple of weeks for our router to arrive and it's here, hot off the line! The router was put into service around 3am on October 1, 1999. There was about a 3-5 minute downtime while the old router was swapped and the new one put into service. We are very much satisfied with the replacement and we're certain that you will be too. We expect/are already seeing vast improvements in DSL service. Limited Access to One of SCC's 3 Providers September 13, 1999 Dear Members, One of Sound Internet's 3 upstream providers has notified us of a circuit outage that might slow connections to Internet sites connected via Sprint. If you should see slow connections this morning or afternoon, this is sure to be the cause. From: Dave Ahlstrand Subject: Sprint Outage At around 8:15 this morning, the first of our two Sprint DS3s went down. According to Sprint, there is a hardware problem in Chicago, where Onvoy connects to Sprint's network. At the present time, Sprint has no estimated time of recovery. The remaining six DS3s to national networks can handle our current level of traffic. However, as traffic increases during the day today, you may see some packet loss until the Sprint DS3 is back up and running. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to you and your users. Thanks for your patience! Sound Internet's State Fair Plans September 1, 1999 Dear Members, On Friday, September 3, the Sound Internet business office will not open until 1:00 pm as we will be holding our annual staff outing at theMinnesota State Fair. Our after-hours support team in Atlanta will be handling technical support calls, and our answering service will alert us of any emergencies. Our business office will open as usual at 1:OO pm and will remain openuntil 6:00 pm. Should you have general service questions or require billing information, please call during this time. Part of the reason why Sound Internet has become known for our high levels of support and service is our team spirit and dedication to our customers. Our annual Minnesota State Fair outing has proven to be a great morale booster and team builder. If you see us at the fair, please feel free to join us as we eat and spend our way through the Midway. See you at the fair! Sound Internet's New Address/4th of July Holiday Hours/Employee Update June 30, 1999 Our staff at SCC would like to wish everyone a safe and fun Fourth of July Weekend. On Monday, July 5, we will be observing the holiday officially and our staff has the option to come to work or take holiday. Regardless if the office is manned or unmanned, the systems will continue to run and support will still be available. We would also like to formally announce our new office address. Although we are already moved into our new space, our change will be official July 1. Our new address is: Sound Internet 2375 University, Suite 210 St. Paul, MN 55114 (651) 644-7533 voice (651) 644-7990 fax Directions: 94 to 280, take University exit eastbound. We are next door to USBank on the corner of Raymond and University. The past two weeks have been very busy with the move. Our building on Nicollet was sold last month and we had to evacuate our office by June 30. Our network operations center (NOC) remains at the Nicollet building and will remain there indefinitely. All of the servers and dialup modem pools will stay in Minneapolis, only our working location has changed. We would also like to bid farewell to one of our staff members, Aaron Dahlberg. Aaron is now working for USWest and we would like to wish him well on his new career. Thanks for the past year of awesome support and all the memories Aaron. Thanks for your continued support as we move into the next millenium. News Provider Outage May 2, 1999 May 3, 1999 The Grapevine Network Operations Center experienced several intermittent network outages between 9:30 P.M. and 11:30 P.M. on the evening of May 2nd, 1999. Network operations staff members were on-site within minutes to trouble-shoot the problem. Normally, through a redundancy method, no interruption of service would be experienced. However, the nature of the outage caused the redundant Internet paths to become "confused" and refuse to accept the transition of the traffic through the network. Network engineers have identified the problem and made the necessary programming changes and implemented a permanent modification to the overall network configuration. Sound Internet Welcomes Two New Staff Members! April 15, 1999 We would like to extend a warm welcome to Sound Internet's newest staff members, Karyn Berg and Josh Goldstein. Karyn, who lives in Minneapolis, began on March 24th and provides additional technical support along with Web Design expertise. Josh, who commutes from Taylors Falls, started working afternoons on April 1st and specializes in Macintosh Support and special projects. We look forward to having them on our team. Even More Sound Internet Growth Announced! Local Coverage Expanded Again to Include Hudson, Wisconsin. Click here for coverage information December 30, 1998 Computer users in Hudson are now able to locally dial Sound Internet!! With a new dial-up number (651) 436-4100, we provide yet another local connection to superior Internet service! You should use this new number only if calling from the the Hudson, WI local calling area. (If your phone number begins with 715-, connectivity should be available soon, or ask your local telephone provider (Ameritech). Mandatory 10-Digit Dialing Between Area Codes 612 and 651 Begins January 10, 1999 MORE INFO December 15, 1998 The Minnesota Public Utilities Commision instated a new area code 651 for Saint Paul and its Suburbs. Depending on where you live, this may affect how your computer needs to dial into the Internet. Please click on the above "more info" link for specific information. You must begin to use all 10 digits when dialling between area codes. You may optionally use all 10 digits for all local calls, even in your same area code, but it is currently not required. Most importantly, to avoid confusion, do NOT dial a 1 before the area code when calling a 10-digit number, or you may be charged long distance accidentally!!! RaDSL Service is On-Line July 9, 1998 Check out the DSL Information Web Page Local Coverage Expanded to Include Lindström, Taylors Falls, Chisago City, Almelund, Shafer, Center City, Franconia, & Osceola, Wisconsin May 1, 1998 Finally, users in Taylors Falls, Almelund, and even Osceola, Wisconsin can dial locally into Sound Internet! With a new digital "257" dial-up number (257-2485), members residing just barely outside the Twin Cities calling area can access the same resources, for the same prices, at the same speeds! You should use this number only if your phone number begins with 651-465, 651-583, or 715-294. Please continue to use 252-2525 if Minneapolis is a local call for you! We look forward to continued outstanding support and further expansion. Sound Internet Announces V.90 Support April, 1998 Our 252-2525 modem pool has been upgraded to support the new V.90 standard. V.90 is an official standard engendered to overcome the incompatibility between the U.S. Robotics/3COM "X2" and Rockwell's KFlex. If you are using a V.90 enabled modem, you will notice the modem makes some "boing" sounds when it is connecting. Don't be alarmed! This is normal. Click to hear what V.90 sounds like Brief System Down Time Friday 2-20-98 @ 11:10PM 20 February, 1998 PM, This evening around 11:10 pm we experienced an authentication server crash for about 10 minutes. During this time, people trying to log in would have recieved access denied messages. People already logged in may not have noticed or received 'Mail Server Not Responding' or 'invalid password' messages when checking email. The problem was solved by rebooting the system. We apologize for any frustrations that may have been caused. We will be looking into what could have caused the unexpected down time. Shortage of lines for a few hours 11 February, 1998 Greetings Everyone, Just wanted to let you know that we had about a 4 hour shortage on our main modem bank this afternoon (approx. 2-6pm 2-11-98). During this time, only 24 modems were available on the main modem pool at 252-2525, as compared to 96 on a normal day. The problem was due to a programming error after this afternoon's installation of another T1, which gives us an additional 24 56K dialup lines. The situation has been corrected. Thank you MaBell for making this problem possible and then correcting it for us :) Lucent Technologies k56Flex Modem Service Now Online 21 January, 1998 We have just completed installation of our new 56K terminal services, and half of the phone service has been completed. The new number for members that wish to beta test the unit is 252-2525. If you need assistance in how to change the phone number configuration, please visit Changing your access number. If you have any problems, call our office at 874-6823 for help. We would appreciate your feedback via email on your experiences with this new number. We will not be offering technical support on these lines until they are all installed and tested thoroughly, by mid next week (1-26-98). If all is working well for you, by all means continue to dial into this new number. If you experience problems, please email staff@scc.net and inform us of the problem(s) you were having, then change back to the old number - 871-7886. We will inform everyone via email of the new dialup number once we know everything is running flawlessly. If you need assistance in how to change your dialup phone number, we will have that information available on our tech support web page by 1-26-98. Please come back then if you need assistance. Once again, the new number will be 252-2525 Thanks everyone for your support over the last three years. Brief Telephone Outage 28 November, 1997 Sound Internet customers may have experienced difficulty connecting to modems this morning between the hours of 8:30am and 9:30am due to a central office problem at US West Communications. We were first aware of the trouble at 8:45 when a customer contacted us via our answering service. We immediately contacted US West repair and were informed they had just received several calls in the last 5 minutes with similar difficulties. When a number in the 612-87x-xxxx area was dialed, only a click could be heard. Or on a few occasions the ringing sound was constant. Many thanks to US West for their prompt repair efforts and to our patient customers. 3Com/US Robotics X2 56k Modem Service Online 14 November, 1997 Sound Choice Internet has completed the installation of its US Robotics X2 56K modem pool. These new modems are just one of the many improvements recently completed this year. At this time a limited number of lines are available. It’s our plan to roll out an entirely new digital modem, and telephone network for the start of next year. These new telephone facilities will replace our existing analog modem banks and provide for 56K modem speeds on every one of our lines. Please note we are planing on supporting the Rockwell 56Kflex standard on these new lines. However this decision is not final at this time. We are not recommending anyone invests in either modems technology until an international standard is adopted. This standard is expected within the next 4 months. If you have a USR X2 compatible modem today, please send e-mail to staff@scc.net to request the telephone numbers to support the higher speed. Verification of your 56K modem maybe required. Third T-1 Line Has Been Installed 25 September, 1997 We have just had our third T1 line installed and it is up and running. This T1 line is fed through NAPNet, a major internet backbone provider relatively new to the Twin Cities. NAPNet had one of the highest ratings from Boardwatch Magazine on Internet Backbone providers. This T1 is a point-to-point connection. Sound Internet can now offer a redundant connection to the internet backbone. We now have the following connections:   1 T1 - MRNet (Frame-Relay) - In and Out T1 1 T1 - Lakes Internet LeSeuer (Frame Relay) - Outgoing 1 T1 - NAPNet (Point to Point) - In and out We are now fed by two different national backbone networks to the Twin Cities. As the internet continues to grow, so do we. We appreciate all the referrels our members have given us over the last couple years. Back to Normal 19 September, 1997 Looks like everything is up and running after last weeks connection problem. A special thank you to the people at US West who kept up with our excessive nagging, and the flood of messages on our contact's voice mail from SCC members having problems. Also, thanks to Mark Gisleson from Gisleson Writing service for your writing skills. US West Problem Causes Login Difficulties 12 September, 1997 We have had reports of customers experiencing difficulty in logging on in recent days. We have thoroughly checked out our system and have determined that there is a problem with US West's equipment that seems to be primarily affecting our subscribers in the Bloomington, Richfield and South Minneapolis areas (or possibly more than we are unaware of). Depending on your computer and software, you may have experienced the following:   "Remote Computer Failed" messages (WIN 95) "Remote Computer Did Not Answer, Win95 could not negotiate a compatible set of protocols" messages (WIN 95) Frequent disconnections (any system) "Authorization failed" messages (Macintosh) US West has told us that they are behind in their service calls due to Tuesday's storm, but the squeaky wheel historically does tend to get the most grease... Thank you for your continued support and understanding while we work through the red tape to solve this issue. Your continued patience is appreciated. Major Internet problems at InterNIC 17 July, 1997 You may notice great difficulty in accessing some sites on the Internet today. This is due to a major failure at InterNIC, the organization that handles all of the domain names on the Internet. This is an Internet-wide failure and is therefore out of Sound Internet's control. InterNIC is aware of the problem and hopes to have it cleared up by the end of the day. New Web Site 7 July, 1997 Many of you noticed the new Look to the Sound Internet Web Site introduced on June 23rd. We received many compliments as well as suggestions for improvement. We've incorporated many of these suggestions into Phase 2 of the Web site upgrade. You'll find an easier-to read format with higher contrast colors, crisper fonts and more information. If you haven't had a chance to try out the new search function, please do. It can be a very useful tool for sorting through the noise on the net. 10 Minute Internet Outage Planned 7 June, 1997 Sound Internet will be temporally down for a period of about 10 minutes. We will be updating a routing table on our Ethernet Switch. We expect that many members will not even notice our working on the equipment. These changes will improve the overall performance of our inner office networks. If you should experience any difficulties, please wait until 10:30AM and try again. No changes will be needed to any other equipment. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call our office at any time or send an eMail to staff@scc.net. Our office number is (612)874-6823. T-1 Line Outage 28 January, 1997 We experienced an interruption in service at around 9:30 last night that lasted until approximately 11:00. The problem was caused by a failure at US-West which brought down our T-1 connection to the Internet. The problem was entirely at US-West and was beyond our control. We apologize for the inconvenience. We are currently working on quality control issues with US-West to try and avoid this type of outage in the future. Phone Line Problems 19 December, 1996 Due to complications with our order for more modem lines from USWest, our voice and fax lines were cut off in the office today for a couple hours. Things seem to be functioning normally again but if you try contacting us and get a message saying, "This number has been disconnected", please call our temporary emergency number at 586-6575. Another New Server! 8 December, 1996 We now have a new server running as our main user machine. This machine is much faster and should prove to be more reliable than the old one. New web pages, more disk space, more memory and more security. With the new system, there may be some problems with personal web pages. If you are using the cgi counter program or imagemaps there are some changes you will need to make. Please contact our offices at (612)874-6823 for assistance. Statewide Internet Outage! 15 September, 1996 The entire state of Minnesota today experienced a communications outage with all Internet sites outside of the state. The problem occurred with major uplink point run by MCI in the Chicago area. The problems were caused by some system work done this morning on MCI's routers. Communications were interrupted for approximately 10 hours while MCI crews worked to correct the problem. This is the longest statewide Internet outage in nearly a year. The last major outage occurred when a major fiber-optic cable connecting Minnesota to the Internet that ran along the Washington Street Bridge was damaged by fire. At this time everything seems to again be functioning normally. We thank you all for your patience during this crisis. Lakes Internet is now Sound Internet 8 July, 1996 This evening we will be completing a very exciting transition. Lakes Internet is becoming a part of Sound Internet. This should provide better opportunity for growth, faster connections, better customer service and all-around better value. We have been working long hours to facilitate a smooth integration, but a few problems may occur along the way. If you do notice anything out-of-place please let us know! If the problem isn't serious (ie. your login prompt looks funny) please eMail a description of the problem to staff@scc.net. If you encounter a serious problem (ie. you can't connect) please call us at 874-6823.
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