| News Server Change | 1:27 PM - Thursday, September 3, 1998 |
In order to provide a more complete and reliable news service, we have contracted a commercial news service and made it available to our users. This is a commercial news service that offers a complete and up-to-date news feed directly through our network connection.If you are currently using either of these addresses "news.accesscom.com" or "snews.accesscom.com" please begin accessing the new news server at one of the below server addresses. You will need to configure this as a new host in your news client software. You may experience some difficulty with the news server change depending on the news client software you use.
You will want to use one of the links below to setup your browser's news client. Click on the appropriate link to do so:
Use one of these three server addresses: 1st path: news1.accesscom.com 2nd path: news2.accesscom.com 3rd path: news3.accesscom.com If you have never connected to any news server, you can disregard this message since the change will not affect you.
| Dial-Up Problems Resolved | 6:13 PM - Wednesday, September 2, 1998 |
The recent problem turned out to be that the PRI lines were resetting faster than our modems were. So this meant calls would try to go back down a newly opened line on the PRI but would hit a modem that hadn't been reset yet. So we have changed the configuration of our chassis. The problems with slow connection rates and busy signals should be gone.You will occasionally experience some busy signals during peak times. When this happens we suggest you just try to dial right back in. You should be able you to get back on-line within 15 minutes. Currently we have an user to modem ratio of 8:1 which is lower than most ISPs in the area. We are in the process of expanding our equipment to allow for more dial-up connections.
We have been doing testing since yesterday afternoon and will continue to do testing to see if this has made a difference. So far this looks to have fixed everything.
If you experience any problems after the time of receiving this message, please send technical support feedback or questions using our on-line form with the following information:
- Day and time it happened
- Access dial-up number called
- The phone number at your location
- City of residence (cross streets if possible)
- What happened
- Modem type
- Modem speed
- If a 56k modem specify (V.90, x2, or K56flex)
We have found that many users are still using the old Cupertino number (408-777-xxxx). We would suggest that any users using that number begin using one of the new numbers from the below list:
Use this search engine to look-up your prefix to see which of the new POPs will be local to you.
We have step-by-step instructions to help you reconfigure your computer to use a new dial-up number at the Changing Your Dial-Up Number Support FAQ.
We will keep you appraised of the progress we make to solving this problem.
| User web pages | 5:30 PM - Tuesday, August 4, 1998 |
We have been alerted to the problem with the web server. Some users are experiencing problems viewing their web pages. We are working on this problem to restore service back to normal.As of 11:45 PM this afternoon we have corrected the problems with the user web pages.
| Shell Server Change | 5:45 PM - Friday, July 17, 1998 |
We will be making some changes to the shell server early Monday morning. These are to correct some recent problems that have plagued that server. We will still be preforming the change at 3:00 AM, with the estimated completion in 1-3 hours.You will not be able to check mail and do other shell related tasks through Access Internet until the change is completed.
| Sendmail Problems (Update) | 2:40 PM - Tuesday, July 7, 1998 |
We have changed a few of the processes related to sendmail. We believe these may have been the reason for the mail delivery problems. We will monitor this problem and make corrections as needed. If you are unable to send mail using our SMTP server address please notify us. You can either call us or use our on-line form which would not be affected.
| Sendmail Problems | 1:40 PM - Monday, July 6, 1998 |
We are aware of the problem that our users are experiencing with sending mail. The problem is due to one of the processes that should be running on our server called sendmail. This process for some reason or other will stop running during the day. When this happens we need to restart that process. We have stopped working all new projects until the problem has been corrected.
| Switching Points Of Presence (POPs) | 2:06 PM - Thursday, June 18, 1998 |
Access Internet will soon be changing the phone numbers you currently dial into. We will post a search engine within our site at http://www.accesscom.com/ that will tell you what dial-up phone numbers are in your local calling area. We will be going from 4 points of presence (POPs) to 11 POPs. This will slightly enlarge the current calling areas that we serve and also should result in better connections for you. If you notice that your phone number is not a local call to any of the new POPs please call our office A.S.A.P.We plan in the near future to expand our POPs to cover the entire Bay area from Santa Rosa to Livermore.
The Dial-Up Numbers for the POPs will be:
Use this search engine to look-up your prefix to see which of the new POPs will be local to you.
The old dial-up numbers for the POPs in Milpitas, Fremont, and Los Altos will no longer be available 30 days after we switch over so be sure to start using these new numbers as soon as we switch.
We are planning the switch for 4:00 AM on Monday, June 29, 1998, with the estimated completion in 2-4 hours.
You will not be able to dial-up to Access Internet until the upgrade is completed.
| Adding V.90 Support | Wednesday, June 3, 1998 |
We have upgraded all of our modems to the new V.90 standard. If you have a x2 modem it will still work. The software for upgrading your 3Com personal modem to V.90 is available from 3Com at Modem Update Wizard or Modem Upgrade Advisor. If you have a K56flex modem you will need to check with the manufacturer for information on upgrading your modem to the new standard.V.90 appears in our testing to provide better connections on poor phone lines. We will be doing more testing and upgrades in the next week. Please be patient with us if you are kicked off the server or receive any busy signals. We expect to be completed with all the upgrades with in two weeks.
| Web Server Change | Monday, June 1, 1998 |
Our current setup on the web server (www) runs cgi scripts as www-data. On Monday June 1st, we intend to change this so all cgi scripts run as the owner of the cgi. This change should be transparent to all users, but we like to inform our users of changes that could possibly affect them.
| Shell Server | 3:54 PM - Wednesday, April 22, 1998 |
Due to a problem with the mail server last evening we have brought that server off-line to do some maintenance on it. We are expecting it to take approximately 3 hours. We are reformatting the /home directory due to file system corruption. We will also check for any bad blocks that may be on this partition.This server outage will only affect incoming mail service and accessing the shell server in general. All incoming mail will be delivered to the correct location once we bring that server back on-line. Sending mail will not be affected.
At 7:35 PM we completed the reformatting and checking for any other errors. The server is now back on-line. After ten minutes of correcting a few things on the server everything was back to normal. We will continue to check the server for any other problems. Please bear with us as we try to get everything worked out.
| News Server Change | Thursday, February 5, 1998 |
In order to provide a more complete and reliable news service, we have contracted a commercial news service and made it available to our users. This is a commercial news service that offers a complete and up-to-date news feed directly through our network connection.If you are currently using our in-house news server "news.accesscom.com" please begin accessing the new server at "snews.accesscom.com". You will need to configure this as a new host in your news client software. You may experience some difficulty with the news server change depending on the news client software you use.
If you have never connected to any news server, you can disregard this message since the change will not affect you.
You will want to use one of the links below to setup your browser's news client. Click on the appropriate link to do so:
If you have never connected to any news server use: news://news.accesscom.com/ If you are using our in-house news server "news.accesscom.com" begin using: news://snews.accesscom.com/
| All Services | 4:01 PM - Monday, February 2, 1998 |
Power was interrupted to the main server facilities at 4:01 PM local time on Monday 2 Feb, 1998. All systems were operated on UPS until approximately 4:30 PM and then shut down. This effected services at all POPs.Power was restored at approximately 8:15 PM local time and all systems were restored around 8:45 PM. We are continuing to monitor the power suituation and expect no further difficulties.
Access Internet Communications