Network News

Network Status Information:
Cumberland Internet
is taking new subscribers

Internet Status Real Time Modem Status Real Time Server Status
T-1 Line to UCIX 33.6 Capable Modems "Fridge" (Mail)

"Too Tall" (Mailman)

Internet Weather Report 56K Capable Modems
(Casey, Greenup, Toledo, Westfield)

56K Capable Modems
(Neoga)

"Sosa" (WWW)

"McGwire" (News)

Do you know which modems you are dialing? We recommend that everyone connect on the 56k modems regardless of your modem's speed. Want to check if you are?

Check out the Alternate Phone Line page for all the information.

1/26/01: (10:00 a.m. -11:40 a.m.) McLeod's T1 network was down. There was a fire in a power substation in Champaign, IL that was affecting McLeod's ability to switch data lines. These are the point to point data lines that we use to connect to the Internet. Our upstream providers were available, we just couldn't get to them. This was also affecting long distance service when you tried to call on your phone. You could go to local pages, but not outside.

1/24/01: We wanted to let you know that a number of Microsoft's sites are down (including Hotmail, MSN Site) today. There is nothing we can do about this but we wanted to let you know that this is Microsoft's problem and I am sure they are working fixing this promptly.

01/05/00: (9:57 a.m.- 12:05 p.m. ) McLeod had a fiber cut that apparently was a very important line. The result was that every one of our data circuits that we pay them for was not working. Neoga users would not have been able to dial in, all other users could dial in but not go outside the rr1.net area. This is the same problem that caused Effingham to not be able to call long distance.

12/11/00: (7:35 p.m.- 8:40 p.m.) During the time noted you would have been able to dial in but not go to sites outside of Cumberland Internet. One of the advantages of being with Cumberland Internet as your service provider is that we are multi-homed which means that we have 2 completely different connections to the 'outside world'. This allows us to protect you from the inevitable errors and problems that can occur on networks everywhere. Apparently we are going to have to get three independent connections to eliminate down time. One network was under performing to the point of being broken by definition at the exact same time as the other was making major modifications and accidentally changed our connectivity to Zero. You could say this was a simultaneous failure of both the proverbial belt and suspenders.

12/7/00: (Neoga Users Only): If you see the listing above, we have a new graph available for Neoga users who are calling the 844 number. Since we have switched users over to this number, we have gotten reports of a 'fast busy' signal. This is happening because the number of circuits available to be open between the town of Neoga & the town of Sigel are a finite number. We have more capacity on our dial in modems than there are lines between the towns. We have spoken with McLeod/ICTC and they have confirmed this problem and are adding capacity between the 2 towns as we speak. The mean time, the 849 numbers will still be available past the December 11th cut off date to allow for you to call either 849 or 844 numbers at peak times. We have capacity in both places and you should be able to get through on the 849 numbers when the 844 number gives you a fast busy signal. Please call us or e-mail us if you have questions. (1/9/01 Update): It appears that the added capcaity between Neoga and Sigel is in place and the fast busy problem is solved. Please dial the 844 number to connect to the Internet. We will be eliminating the 849 numbers shortly.

10/16/00 : (8:00 p.m. - 9:35 p.m) Our remote access software was not allowing dial in users to connect. People already dialed on would have not seen any problem but if you were trying to call during the time mentioned it would look like the connection got hung up at the verifying username and password step and you would not have been able to connect. We have reset the software and will monitor it closely.

9/11/00 : GTE has informed us that they have a bad line card in the Neoga phone switch. This limits the number of total phone circuits available at any one time in Neoga, which causes Neoga GTE phone customers to have no dial tone, or fast busy signals when calling people if they do get a dial tone, and (surprise, surprise) reported busy signals when trying to dial Cumberland Internet. GTE says they will be replacing the defective line card Wednesday after midnight. Obviously there is nothing Cumberland Internet can do about this problem other than wait until GTE actually has their phone network working correctly(hard to establish an Internet connection if GTE can't even complete a phone call). Hopefully GTE will get their equipment delivered on time, and complete their repair early Wednesday morning, and everything will be back to normal. Hopefully.

9/6/00 (Morning): The analog lines in Greenup (33.6 lines) are down. In addition, the entire block that we are on in Greenup is having problems with their telephone lines. For example, you can't call our main telephone line 923-5115 but you CAN call our 3rd line 923-3726 or our 4th line 923-3515 if you need VOICE assistance or you want to reach us by telephone. Obviously, there is a problem with GTE's Central Telephone Office that affects more than our telephone service in Greenup and they are working on the solution as we speak. None of this problem affects our 56k phone lines so if you don't know your alternate phone number to connect, follow the link above and have a primary number and a back up number handy in case you have to use the alternate line.

6/1/00 (1:00 a.m. - 8:10 a.m.): If you were already online you would not have noticed any problem during this time period. If you tried to dial in on the 56k line you would not have gotten connected. If you dialed on the 33.6k lines you would have gotten connected and everything worked correctly (be sure to know your alternate phone number for just this type of situation). We had a T-1 (the first one in the incoming dial up pool) that was reset and we, in turn, had to reset our remote access equipment for users to be able to connect.

5/25/00 (3:00 p.m. - 3:10 p.m.): Connection to Internet was down for about 10 minutes while we did some necessary cable rearranging.

5/16/00 (9:15 p.m. - 10:15 p.m.): The Mail Server decided to take an unscheduled 1 hour break. It is now back in action- sorry about any inconvenience.

3/14/00 (4:30 p.m. - 6:20 p.m.): GTE was doing something to our T-1 lines that caused our 5th & 6th T-1 circuits to not work properly. Only 96 users were able to get on at that time. Other users dialing would have gotten nothing when dialing the number (no modem noises). The T-1 circuits are working correctly as of 6:20 p.m.

3/8/00 (8:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.): One of our 2 T-1's that connect to the Internet was having a phone circuit problem. You would have noticed the problem by having web pages come up slowly or for a brief time- no web pages coming up outside rr1.net local pages.

2/15/00: Cumberland Internet has a waiting list for new subscribers. Questions, call 217-923-5115. Update 2/17/00: Our new lines have been installed and we are again taking new subscribers.

1/19/00 From 3 p.m. to around 3:30 p.m. - same problem as 1/18/00 - existing users dialed in would not have noticed anything, new users dialed in were prompted for username and password repeatedly. We rebooted (hard boot) the remote access hardware, we believe this has fixed the problem.

1/18/2000: From 4:50 p.m.until 5:00 p.m. - You would have been prompted for your username and password repeatedly. We reset the remote access hardware (soft boot) and this fixed the problem. The problem repeated from 8:50 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. - We're working on the problem so it won't happen again.

1/15/200 3:30 p.m.- Our new dial in T-1 is installed and running, giving us a total of 168 56k capable modems. As of 1/15 we are again signing up new subscribers. (We started our waiting list 1/10/2000).

10/25/99 4:22 p.m.- We have an open ticket with GTE on the problems with our dial in T-1 lines. All calls going to the first 2 T-1's are not being connected to our modems. We have disconnected those two dial in T-1's from our equipment, and all calls are now being answered by our other T-1's(currently 96 total modems available). GTE is working on it, and we'll keep you informed as soon as we hear anything from them. 5:35 p.m. - All 144 phone lines are up now and appear to be working correctly. We'll keep a close eye on it to see what happens the next 24 hours. Thank you for your patience while we worked on this problem. Since it was intermittent, it was difficult to troubleshoot for GTE.

10/22/99 5:00 p.m.- We are seeing some problems connecting when dialing in or staying connected. Not all users are seeing it but some modems are more affected than others. We are working on this problem and don't know it is the same problem as was listed 10/9/99 or not. We are checking everything out and will update this page to let you know what we find.

10/21/99 4:25 p.m.: New users dialing in would have been prompted for their password and not connect. Existing users dialed in would not have noticed any problem. 4:35 p.m. We reset the authentication software and it is working correctly now.

10/9/99 : Our first incoming T-1 has decided that it is going to recycle itself every ten minutes or so. GTE is going to be working on it(anybody else recognize a pattern here?), probably taking that T-1 out of commission, and routing all incoming calls to start with our second T-1. That should fix things while they inspect the defective T-1. We are sorry for the inconvenience, and will keep you updated as to the status of this situation.

9/27/99 (Evening): Our incoming phone lines are causing problems. The phone line is stopping operation, resetting and then repeating the process. To you as a dialer, you would not be able to keep your connection and you would be kicked offline. When you reconnect, the process repeats. We had GTE working on it until Midnight and they saw the problem occurring. They have put some tracing equipment on the lines to figure out what is going on but we don't have the results yet. We are still working on this and hope to repair it today. Update 9/28/99 6:00 p.m.: GTE has switched our incoming T-1's (the phone lines you dial in on) over to a different Fiber Card in the Central Office and this appears to have fixed the problem of the T-1's resetting and causing disconnects.

9/19/99 (4 am - 1:30 p.m.): Our T-1 circuit is down. We have been working on it since 7 am. You can go to anything that is stored locally but not outside. We will post with an update as soon as we have one available. Update: There is a phone circuit between Indianapolis and St. Louis that is down and it is one we use to connect to the Internet. We have called everyone possible to get this phone line repaired but we don't have an estimated time yet on when it will be up. 12:21 p.m. McLeod is going to turn on an alternate line from their Indianapolis Switch to the local router. They have quit trying to fix the old line and are replacing the line. Normally it takes about 2 months to get a T-1 installed but they are doing it now, we hope it will be up around 3 pm. 1:30 p.m.- we're back up. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

9/6/99 (2 am - 10:30 am): The 33.6 modems were not answering the phone if you dialed into them. This is the 2nd time this has happened at 2 am so we are looking at what is causing the modems to all get reset at the same time. This is why every user should know their alternate phone number to dial in if their primary number is unavailable. Click on the link above labeled 'Alternate Phone Line Page' to make a note of your back up phone number. Again, we are working to determine what caused this problem to keep it from occurring again in the future. The 56k modems were working fine during this entire period. Update: The problem was because of spikes in the incoming power. We have repaired the problem.

7/11/99: (6:00 a.m- currently): Looks like the same problem from 7/9/99- Unable to dial in or when you can dial in you get to our homepage but not outside. We're working on it, watch for updates.

7/9/99: (4:30 p.m. - 5:40 p.m.): Correction: Telephone Circuit was down. You can get to the Cumberland Internet Homepage but not outside. Update: Telephone circuit repaired at 5:40 pm.

7/1/99: (3:24 p.m. - 4:20 p.m.): Power problems in Greenup. Power was up and down while 1/2 of the 220 power was not working in Greenup. All power turned off by Greenup to correct problem. You could connect off and on in this period. At the moment, you can connect and get local pages but not the outside pages. We'll fix it a.s.a.p., watch here for updates. (Update 4:45 p.m. - It's all working now)

6/27/99: (2:15 p.m.- 3:45 p.m.): You can dial in and get local pages but the route out to other pages on the Internet is not working. We are working on it right now and will post an update as soon as we have it available. (Update 3:35 p.m.: We have identified the router that is the problem and are working on a solution. It should not be too much longer. Watch for further updates here.) 3:45 p.m.- We're back up and working again. It looks like it was an ethernet port on a router that died. Sorry for any delay or problems.

6/10/99 (9:59 a.m.): If you are having any problem with an auction on eBay it is because eBay is having some serious problems on their end. They've had a hardware failure and have suspended auctions. You can read about it here. You can also go directly to the eBay network news page that they update often.

6/7/99: Cumberland Internet has another connection to the Internet (see above chart T-1 line to UCIX). What this means to you is that your webpages will load faster. This is because your requests are routed more efficiently through lines that have less traffic than the McLeod T-1. Cumberland Internet is your FAST way to the Internet. Enjoy!

6/6/99: If you have a counter on your page, e-mail suggestions@rr1.net to give me the correct page count. These were reset when we updated our harddrive from the 6/2/99 incident below.

6/2/99 (~2 am - 5:05 am): The Server (Computer) that handles all e-mail for Cumberland Internet had a hard drive crash around 2 a.m.. By 5 a.m. 6/2/99 we had restored mail services and were able to send and receive e-mail to rr1.net users. However, the mail that was on the server at the time of the crash is not likely to be recovered. We will make every effort to recover the data from the damaged hard drive but the bottom line is that if you have sent e-mail to a rr1.net user in the last 24 hours, you might want to resend it to that user because they might not have gotten it. If you regularily e-mail to other people, you might let them know to resend you any mail that they might have sent in 6/1/99. We apologize for any inconvenience and will strive to keep you fully informed of anything that affects your service

5/13/99 ( 11 pm) to 5/14/99 (1:00 pm): All WebTV's servers were down. All users who were using a webtv box were unable to connect to the Internet. This affected every WebTV user in the United States and not just WebTV users who were dialing Cumberland Internet. If you have questions or want additional information, feel free to call 1-800-GOWEBTV.

5/12/99 (~4:00 p.m.) to 5/13/99 (10 a.m.): You would not have been able to connect to our FTP server. It is now up and working correctly.

3/28/99 (9:15 am - 10:00 am): We had to reset the mail server. You were unable to receive your mail during the time listed. You were, however, able to send mail during this time.

2/2/99 (Midnight - 5 am): System maintenance on the mail server. You were able to log on and go anywhere on the web, but you were not able to get your mail during this period.

1/29/99: This information is about the status of getting Newsgroups. Our Newsgroup feed is from Consolidated/McLeod Communications. Their main server for handling news died and all the traffic is being handled by a small, backup server. This small, backup server cannot handle all the traffic for the news feed. They are sending out a smaller, newsfeed in the interim. They have a new server that they can put online but before it is allowed to go online, they must cerfify it for Y2K. That should take until the end of next week. Our estimated date for a full newsfeed is February 5, 1999. You can still read newsgroups by going to www.dejanews.com until the full feed is returned. Please let me know if you have anyquestions.

1/19/99: Westfield Users Only- The lines that you call on are water logged and have a scratchy sound that will interfere with your connection. We have called GTE to fix this and we hope it will be fixed tomorrow 1/20/99.

1/13/99 (10:30 am -Noon): CIPS Power grid in Greenup was down starting shortly after 9 am until noon. Toledo, Greenup and Casey had no power while Neoga still had power. Neoga users were able to continue online until about 10:30 am when the back up batteries were used up.

12/06/98: Greenup Evening Power Flash until 10:24 pm- Homepage would not load. We moved the server that loads webpages to the Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS). We thought we had it plugged into this already but....Our mistake!

11/30/98: 9 pm -10 :30 pm (off and on): The homepage may have not been available during the time mentioned. The page was available off and on during that time. We were moving WWW and FTP services to a different (faster!) server. We apologize for any inconvenience. Also, any of you who are using FTP to upload the webpages, you will need to upload to ftp.rr1.net rather than to the old domain number (208.132.114.5). If you have questions, check out our FTP Upload page. Also, the scripts for updating your webpage counter should be as follows (The only difference is a lowercase 'S' in scripts: <CENTER><FONT SIZE=+1>You are visitor number <IMG src=/scripts/counter.exe?-w5+yourusername.htm> since xx/xx/98<BR> </FONT></CENTER>

11/19/98: 4:30 pm- 5:10 pm- Consolidated Communications is transferring all Internet handling over to McLeod USA in Iowa from their site in St. Louis. Their routers are currently behaving in a manner that could be described as broken. Evidently even Consolidated Communications doesn't even know how to reach the Internet Network Operations Center in Iowa. Really, I couldn't make up this good of a story. As it stands we have a trouble ticket open with the phone company side of the business and we are hoping that they can find the Internet Network Operations Center phone number in Iowa soon. In the mean time you can get to our pages but anything outside is slllllooooowwww. Update: 7:30 p.m.- we got a hold of the Network Operations Center in Iowa and they are looking at rerouting our T-1. The volume of traffic on the route we are taking through Consolidated (in St. Louis) is starting to cause packet loss problems.

10/20/98: 9:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m. - 2 of our 4 incoming T-1 lines that are the 'phone lines' that you dial in on when you are calling the 56k modems were having frame errors. We contacted GTE and they worked on the problem. What happens with this error is that you will call our 56k line and get nothing. If you pick up the telephone and call it you will dial the phone and then get nothing. If you retried, there were enough non-frame errors that you would get through after repeated attempts. Basically, the incoming phone lines were not connecting through the central office successfully.

8/6/98 9:45 a.m.-11:00 a.m. - Our T-1 circuit to Consolidated was down. I still don't have a satisfactory explanation from them yet. Consolidated ran a test sequence on the circuit and it came back up after the test. Of course they only did that after having us reset every piece of equipment we have, to make sure it's not us causing the problem. THEN they test their stuff. And that fixes it. Consolidated says it's not clear what the problem is, and can't say for sure where the error occurred. We disagree. We are of the opinion that a specific piece of equipment (just guessing, but maybe a frame switch) has a problem with resets. We've seen this before, but they didn't fix it on just our word last time, so it looks like your friendly neighborhood system administrator gets to sleep next to his computer for a week or two.

7/29/98 12:00 a.m.-4:00 a.m. - GTE will be updating the wire circuitry that supports our T-1 internet connection to Consolidated. There might be interruptions, intermittently, to our upstream connection. Most of the time these upgrades are done with only a minute or two of downtime at the most, so you might not even notice this outage if things go well. Cross your fingers.

7/27/98 7:15 a.m.-10:15 a.m. - MCI updated their routers this morning, and mis-configured the routing for the ports that lead to Consolidated Communications. As a result all customers of CCI high speed internet services (us, advant.com, effingham.com, and at least 18 others) were unable to access the internet. MCI corrected their routing tables at 10:15 and things are hopefully back to normal.

7/24/98 ~1:45 p.m.-5:15 p.m. - Invasion of the backhoes! A slightly important piece of fiber optic cable was cut south of Mattoon on Rt. 45. Apparently the fiber splice crew jumped right on it since we had a repair update that it would be done at 7:00, and we were back up at 5:15. Must have had telephone traffic on it. ;)

Now you know why all system administrators with wide area links breath a sigh of relief when construction season ends.

7/18/98 10:30 p.m.-12:00 p.m. - RR1.net was the victim of a Denial Of Service attack. Some creative little computer user out on the internet apparently had a little spat with another user. The creative user decided to attack his enemy using a specific component of the IP protocol, causing our network and 5 or 6 other networks to politely inquire as to the network status of the victim's network several thousand times a second. This clogged our network pipes, as weel as the other networks, and of course the intended victim got deluged. Once we were able to identify the source of the problem we modified our router configuration with a filter on these specific types of attacks. Our upstream provider also modified their router configuration to also provide another layer of protection. These modifications should prevent a reccurence of the same type of attack.

Just another example of a formerly useful network service becoming a point of abuse by immature and destructive network users (similar to what has happened with spam and e-mail). Of course, this type of attack is specifically illegal, and if this network abuser is tracked down, suffice it to say 5 or 6 ISP's would be very interested in pressing charges. Then the fun starts, because the penalties for Denial-of-Service attacks include fines and (drum-roll, please) jail time.

Just a tidbit of information for anyone else who thinks they are a clever network user. As was stated by an RR1 user earlier this week, "there is no internet access in Marion".

6/16/98 10:15 a.m.-10:30 a.m. - GTE did preventative maintenance on our T-1 that connects us to the Internet. You could still dial in and get local webpages but not others (like infoseek or others).

6/10/98: 3:30 p.m. - The T-1 line that you dial in on with the 923-5432 line is down. We are working with GTE to get it fixed. If you call the alternate number (follow link above), you'll get the alternate number for your calling area. Update: 3:54 p.m. The primary T-1 is still being fixed but you can connect calling 923-5432 because you are calling the 2nd and 3rd T-1 line. Thanks Scott & Phil for getting us up so quickly!

5/30/98: 9 am-Noon- You again were not able to browse the rr1.net homepage. You were still able to browse the Internet if you went to other pages. Repeat of the 5/4/98 issue. Update: 5/31/98 9:30 am- Web page counters are not showing up on local web pages. Don't change anything on your webpage, we will fix it so the counter image is working shortly. I will still keep count of your hits the graphic is just not loading.

5/4/98: 8:45 p.m. - 9:15 p.m. -You were not able to browse the rr1.net homepage because we were updating our server software. You were still able to browse the Internet if you went to other addresses, just the homepage was unavailable.

4/13/98: One modem on the 33.6 modems was not picking up correctly on Easter Sunday. You would have gotten a busy signal or a ringing with no answer. It is repaired now.

4/11/98: The modem status and server status graphs are hosted on a remote site that is not up right now. Cumberland Internet is up and running fine, you just can't get the graphs right now. 8:30 p.m. Update: The graphs are available again.

3/29/98: I have updated the Network News Page. Old Network News is still available for your reference, it covers the period from 12/27/96-3/28/98.

If you have any questions, comments, etc. e-mail suggestions@rr1.net.