Blue Moon
Customer News

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Updated Wednesday, 31-Jan-2007 10:36:12 EST

- Service Notices - Blue Moon Network Operations -
- Configuration Help - Fighting SPAM

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Blue Moon Service Disruptions Will be Posted On This Page

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1-31-07 10:20 AM - Dialup Line Problems Resolved

We just tested both access numbers (517-6000 and 517-6600) and they are now answering and serving connections normally. We have not yet been told what the problem was, but it appears to have been resolved by the phone company. - 10:30 AM UPDATE: The phone company has reported that a card in one of their switches which services our circuits went bad and was replaced. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

1-31-07 9:40 AM - Dialup Lines Ringing Busy

Between 9:30 and 9:45 AM all sessions were mysteriously dropped and both dialup connection access numbers started ringing busy for an unknown reason. Our equipment is all in good working order so this problem originates with the phone company. We are working with their service department to resolve this issue ASAP.

1-18-07 - Incoming Domain Email Delays

It appears that some criminal spammers have been using forged email address from at least two of the domains that we host. This is causing a Denial of Service condition on the domain email server as we are being mail bombed with delivery failure notices from literally thousands of internet mail servers that are attempting to notify the forged addresses which don't exist. This will only continue until a short while after the spammers stop spamming using our customers' domain names in their spam. Incoming mail for domain customers is only being delayed while this is happening and it does not affect any outgoing email or any email for dialup customers. The spammers keep trying to say that spam doesn't hurt anyone, that's obviously a lie.

10-16-06 11:00 AM - Power Outage

We knew it was too good to be true that we hadn't once lost power due to the storm. This morning power company workers shut down our power to work on the lines. There were some short outages while we switched to generator power and replaced some uninterruptable power supplies which have batteries needing replacement.

6-26-06 10:55 PM - 517-6000 Dialups Failing to Answer

We had a short outage for the 517-6000 access number. We took the opportunity to power cycle and clean the equipment and it seems to be working normally again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

6-13-06 4:50 PM - Internet Backbone Outage Update

Both internet backbone circuits have been restored to full operation.

6-13-06 3:30 PM - Internet Backbone Outage

Both of our internet backbone circuits went out at exactly the same time. This issue is apparently affecting a lot of the customers who use these two backbone providers. We are working with the backbone providers to get service restored. We apologize for any inconvenience.

3-20-06 5:30 AM - Server Maintenance

The power supply in the main mail and authentication server died. We swapped it out for a spare and it is operating normally. No email was lost.

3-13-06 Afternoon - 517-6600 Dialup Server Problems

The 517-6600 dialup connection server had some problems for a few hours this afternoon which may have caused some connection failures. Its configuration was modified and it seems to be behaving again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

2-5-05 10:15 AM - Internet Routing Problems - Resolved

Full routing has been restored. We will continue to monitor internet connectivity.

2-5-05 Morning - Internet Routing Problems

Both WilTel and Cogent seem to be experiencing peering problems in New York City at this time. We are working with both vendors to restore full internet connectivity.

12-25-05 - Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all our customers!

11-24-05 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Phone tech support will be unavailable on Thursday due to the holiday, but tech support email to support at bluemoon.net will still be handled.


Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

8-03-05 Afternoon - Telco Problems

Something happened at the telephone company this morning which has apparently affected a block of our incoming dialup lines which may cause some busy signals until they repair their problem. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

6-24-05 2:30 PM - Server Maintenance

The main authentication and email server will be offline for maintenance for about 15 minutes starting at 2:30 PM EDT.

6-10-05 Evening - Storm Problems - Phone Service Problem Resolved

Modem connection stability and speed appear to be normal. Any problems experienced after this time are likely due to isolated Verizon problems on the orginating network side of the connection as it was reported that Verizon also experienced service problems resulting from the storm.

6-10-05 5 PM - Storm Problems - Phone Service Update

We have been told that the incoming phone line problems are due to the lightning strike on a Telcove phone routing switch last night. It has caused what they are calling "timing problems" and what we see on our end are severely degraded modem connections resulting is poor speeds and sometimes disconnection. Apparently this problem extends to hundreds of commercial customers so we're not alone. We were told that the problem could be resolved in as soon as 1 hour, but history tells us it usually takes somewhat longer.

6-10-05 - Storm Problems

Last night's storm apparently caused a lot of damage because we suffered a 14 hour loss of elecrical power and had to do our best with a backup generator. The phone company also had problems, one of their big switches was struck by lightning and we've been experiencing some connection problems on a couple of our incoming phone circuits since then. They will be taking them out of service for intrusive testing ASAP which will hopefully identify the specific problem. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

4-27-05 - Internet Backbone Outage - Cogent

We have been experiencing problems with our internet backbone circuit with Cogent. They tried to blame our equipment so we hooked it up to a backup router and it experienced the same problems. Our Wil-Tel circuit is picking up the slack while Cogent and Verizon figure out their problem. Because this temporarily cuts our bandwidth in half browsing may be a little sluggish until the problem is resolved.

4-21-05 10:00 AM - Dialup Phone Line Carrier Change

We are scheduled to change local phone service carriers from AT&T to Telcove at 10:00 AM Thursday. We have been told that it should only take 5 minutes to do. All customers will be disconnected during the changeover. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

3-30-05 - Spam Filter Glitches

We had upgraded the mail server which caused some problems with portions of the spam filtering system causing some junk to get through. It was functioning only at about 70% to 75% of its normal level of effectiveness. This was repaired yesterday afternoon (it was very hard to track down) and our log monitoring now shows the spam filters to be more effective than they ever have been.


We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

1-16-05 6:00 PM - North Buffalo Power Failure

Niagara Mohawk had another power outage. We switched to the generator backup and almost immediately the outage ended. For over 20 years Niagara Mohawk was very reliable, but that reliablity seems to have ended about 5 years ago and it seems to get progressively worse each year.

1-15-05 12:15 PM to 1:30 PM - Internet Outage

A maintenance man inadvertantly severed power from a multiplexer which handles both of our internet circuits causing a lack of connectivity to the internet. We are taking steps to see that this doesn't happen again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

12-22-04 1:00 AM to 3:00 AM - Scheduled Server Maintenance

We will be doing a major upgrade on our main server early in the morning on Wednesday. Dialup authentication, email and some customer (mostly dialup) websites will be down during this period. Already connected customers will remain connected. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

10-17-04 Late Morning - North Buffalo Power Failure

Niagara Mohawk has a power failure in our area which exhausted our uninterruptable power supplies. We have one of our backup generators powering the network until Niagara Mohawk repairs the problem.

9-19-2004 11:00 PM - Server Upgrade

The main dialup authentication, mail and web server will down for 5 to 15 minutes for a quick hardware upgrade. We apologize for any incovenience which this may cause.

9-1-2004 - 517-6600 Dialup Problem Update

The 3Com Total Control chassis' power supply died. We have a replacement on the way which should be installed before this weekend. The 517-6600 number is accesing our modems on the 517-6000 hunt group so connections will get through without changing any configurations. The will be no busy signal problems as we main such a high modem to customer ratio that we have plenty of excess capacity. As always, we apologize for any incovenience which this may cause.

9-1-2004 1:20 PM - 517-6600 Dialup Problems

The 3Com v.90/X2 terminal server connected to the 517-6600 phone number has experienced a component failure. We are working on the problem.

7-18-2004 - Network Maintenance

Over the course of the next week we will be performing server maintenance on all of our network servers. This will require some servers to be down for short periods of time for cleaning and component replacement. We apologize for any inconvenience you may experience during this time.

7-2-2004 9:53 PM - Server Crash

The main authentication server crashed about an hour ago. There was nobody on site at the time due to the holiday weekend and the automatic filesystem check failed so it didn't come back up. No files were lost in the crash. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion.

6-7-2004 Afternoon - Hard Drive Failure

We had a hard drive failure on our main unix server so we took the opportunity to upgrade one of the other disks at the same time and performed some maintenance. This resulted in some email and authentication downtime for some customers for which we apologize.

3-31-2004 - AT&T Phone Line Rerouting Update

AT&T has completed the phone circuit rerouting. Please email webmaster AT bluemoon DOT net if you experience any modem speed degradation. Initial testing shows average connect speeds to be good on the new circuits.

3-31-2004 - AT&T Phone Line Rerouting

AT&T has forced us to have all of our dialup circuits reinstalled because of their desire to close a Buffalo office. They say they are ready to switch over the circuits today and that it will only result in 5 minutes of downtime. They want to do it at 1 PM and we frankly don't have much of a choice in this matter. We hope the downtime is minimal and we apologize for the short notice and any inconvenience this may cause.

3-6-2004 - Recent Virus/Trojan/Worm Outbreaks

There is a new version of the Bagle worm which sends forged email claiming to be from the recipient's ISP and instructs the user to unzip and execute a file to continue to be able to use the internet or get email. The From: addresses, message subject, message body and attached filename (which may or may not be zipped) change from mail to mail so they are very hard to block. We will NEVER send a customer an unsolicited email with an attachment. If you don't know exactly what it is that is attached to an email which you have received, DON'T OPEN IT!


Virus, Trojan and Worm activity on the internet has continued to escalate in the past month and we continue to identify customers who have been infected and have been unwittingly attempting to spread them via email. We Highly Recommend that all customers periodically download and run the free McAfee AVERT Stinger tool which may be obtained at http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

1-27-2004 - Computer and Home Network Security

Over the past several weeks a number of new email borne viruses have been circulating around the internet. While we block a lot of malicious material before it ever gets to your email box we can't block it all. We strongly urge you to educate yourselves against these internet terrorists by learning at least basic computer and network security. A very good starting point is the Home Network Security page at the CERT® Coordination Center.

12-12-2003 2:00 PM - Internet Trojan Filtering

We have taken measures to prevent numerous virus/trojans from being able to infect customers' computers through their dialup connections, but it is absolutely imperative that M$ Windows users obtain and frequently update virus protection on their computers. We cannot prevent customers from downloading programs which might infect their computers or from visiting websites which have embedded trojans on their pages which exploit Windows security vulnerabilities so the only way to stay ahead of the game is for everyone to install good virus protection with a real-time scanning engine and have it regularly check for virus definition updates.


Some good anti-virus resources are HERE.

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IRC / Personal Home Pages

IRC

Shell account IRCers have many servers to choose from in the /server menu. To enter irc from the unix shell just type "irc" without the quote marks at any unix prompt.

The Blue Moon runs the Trivia channel in IRC on ZUHnet IRC! /join #trivia in irc.zuh.net to play this very popular multi-player IRC game show! For best results use our IRC server at irc.bluemoon.net to minimize net-lag. Trivia's Home Page is here.

For IRC help type '/help' or join channel '/join #help' while in IRC.

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Personal Home Pages

Your personal home page can be accessed with the address

http://www.bluemoon.net/~username

where username is your login name. To upload files for your home page, the easiest way is to use an ftp program through your PPP connection. The directory to ftp the files into the directory /usr/users/username/html where username is your login name. You may need to change the protections on the files you upload either using the ftp program, or else through a telnet session or terminal program using the command

chmod 755 filename.html

where filename.html is the name of the file.

For quick help in editting your home page from a shell login (host: internet) type 'homepage' from any shell prompt!

Check Our Help Site for more information!

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Internal News Help Links

Throughout the News Page you will notice various helpful links. Here is a quick and easy way to access them.

We have added The Blue Moon Backbone Status Page so users can check the various networks for connectivity.

OUR TERMS OF SERVICE AGREEMENT - ALL USERS MUST READ!

If you have never read our Terms of Service agreement sent out by POP E-Mail (some shell users may not have received it in the past) please take the time to review it now by clicking here.

Users interested in Configuration Help can periodically check our General Help Site.

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Additional Information

For questions regarding your web site, you can E-Mail Webmaster

There are many different low priced account levels available to businesses. Click here for more information and reduced pricing on Business Accounts

Having computer problems? Blue Moon offers ON-SITE help. For more information, E-Mail questions -= AT =- bluemoon.net (swap out " -= AT =- " for @) Prices start at $25. Prices are based on the individual customer's needs.

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