Important Notices

We will post important notices about your service on this website. If you think there may be an outage, please consult this page before calling.

All information posted on this website will also be sent to your email address.

All systems operational
Mon Aug 10 14:00:00 2009
The connection to the Internet came back up at around 10:30 a.m. this morning. Everything should be operational again

We return you now to your surfing, already in progress....
Thank you for your patience!
Mon Aug 10 08:00:00 2009
At approximately 6.30am this morning our connection to the Internet went down. A trouble ticket has been opened with Embarq which has been associated with a larger issue trouble ticket covering this area. There is a major outage with Embarq in the area. You will be able to connect to MoonStar and view any email currently in the system and any websites hosted on MoonStar.

It does seem to be a major issue as the Embarq technical support was swamped and long distance numbers, at least 1-800 and 1-888 also seem to be having issues.

We will let you know when have any updates. Thank you for your patience!
Wed Apr 1 09:30:00 2009 As most of you will already have realized the routing issue was resolved several hours ago. As of 9.30am everything should be operating normally. While I have your attention, for anyone concerned about today's virus warnings here is a handy tool from McAfee you can download and use to scan your machine to put your mind at ease - Avert Stinger Tool from McAfee - http://vil.nai.com/vil/conficker_stinger/Stinger_Coficker.exe
Wed Apr 1 07:30:00 2009 Our connection to the Internet is currently down. Embarq is experiencing major routing issue with their Metroethernet service. They are working to get it resolved.
Incoming Email from Customers outside of MoonStar has been restored. Please check your email for more details.
Fri May 2 15:00:00 2008
Services were restored a little before 3pm so ahead of schedule!

We return you now to your surfing, already in progress....
Fri May 2 13:22:00 2008
As many of you are probably aware by now there is a problem with the connection to the Internet. There has been a major fiber cut in the Charlottesville area that has taken out a lot of services in the area. If you want to blame anyone in particular the culprit this time is apparently Time-Warner. The splicers are on the job and hard at it working to get Central Virginia back online. The current ETA is between 3 and 4pm ... *fingers crossed* it will be closer to the first than the second :)

If it is of any consolation whatsoever it has been over a year since we have experienced a fiber cut so the backhoe operators must be getting better :)
Fri Dec 8 13:58:00 2006
Our connection to the internet is currently bouncing. We have contacted our provider and are waiting for more details at this time
Sun Sept 16 12:30:00 2006
This message is to confirm that the outage is indeed finally over. It came back at approximately 10.20 am this morning and has stayed stable since. Any emails you send now will go through immediately but the server will need a bit of time to catch up with the backlog of email to and from the world outside of MoonStar from the time we were down.

More details should be coming in an email later but for now I just wanted to let everyone know that everything with their connection should be working.

Many thanks!

MJ
Sat Sept 16 14:22:00 2006

One of our customers has a theory that the techs were riding slow mules to
the CO, which, from my perspective, I cannot argue against.

Whatever their mode of transport, I just got word that both techs, one
from each of the Verizon divisions who are currently pointing fingers at
each other, have finally arrived on site and currently working the issue
as we speak.

Let us now hope and pray that 1) the problem is obvious and easy to fix,
2) they brought the right replacement parts, 3) the replacement parts
aren't broken, and 4) their mules don't kick some other equipment in the
CO and break something else (which of course, won't be either Verizon
divisions' problem and we'll have to call in someone else).

Stay tuned....

Lon
Sat Sept 16 10:17:00 2006
Color me amazed, we just actually got a callback as that last message was
going out. Once again, they have a tech dispatched to the site. The
difference this time is they had an actual ETA of...checking watch...
about now. Cross your fingers and pray to the god of your choice on that
one, folks.

I've also been told that there are approximately 45 other customers in the
same predicament we are. I've also been told that all this screwup is due
to Verizon taking over and changing all the organization and ticketing
systems in the past few weeks (employee who said this was an old MCI
employee who sounded none to happy about the recent changes in
their workplace). That employee also told me I should yell at my account
sales representative. I asked her who that was, and evidently we don't
have one. *laugh* I told her it took serious cajones for a company to
look a customer square in the eye and tell them that they couldn't spare a
sales representative for them.

....ARRRGH.....

While writing this email, I got another callback saying that Verizon has
put two notes on our trouble ticket... one saying that the technician has
been delayed and won't be on site for another 2 hours, and the other one
said that Verizon was having an emergency and wouldn't work this ticket
until Monday. Now we're back to where we were in the middle of last night.
*sigh* Although this employee I'm talking to seemed to take personal
offense to that second note and is currently making calls to ensure that
the ticket is worked today instead of Monday.

One would think that providing services to two county governments, a
coupld of medical offices, and a bunch of businesses would carry some
weight, but evidently not. They're Verizon, and for the next two years at
least, they can do whatever they bloody well please.

I'd drive to Lynchburg and fix the thing myself, but I'm certain they'd
claim I was a terrorist and throw me in jail indefinately without a bail
hearing or access to a lawyer.

Lon Stockton
waiting for a callback
Sat Sept 16 09:49:00 2006
After a long long night of frustration, getting the runaround, being lied
to, and other miscellaneous fun stuff, I'm able to report....

....nothing new. The last update is that they know where the problem is
and are dispatching a technician to repair it. Does that sound familiar to
anyone? Like what they claimed 24 hours ago? Does it really take 24 hours
for a technician to be on site at a CO in Lynchburg?

But hey, at least their current story, as similar as it is to the story
they told us 24 hours ago, is an improvement over some of the various
stories from last night. For example: at one point we were told that they
knew were it was, but would not even begin repair work until 8am on Monday
morning! They claimed that the CO wasn't owned by them and they couldn't
contact the owners. (Later we found out that they indeed did own the
facility and and the issue was actually political infighting between
different divisions of the company). Actually, it also seems that
inter-divisional fingerpointing is why they didn't continue to attempt
repair after the first dispatch/card_replacement didn't work for several
hours after it happened (despite us and several other affected customers
opening trouble tickets)...pushing it until after 5pm when the people
working the problem abruptly went home promising they'd take it up first
thing Monday.

So there you have it. In the 29 hours since this thing began, we've been
told a lot of stories, mostly crap. Contradictions and lies abound. Out of
the 10 or so times we were promised a callback, guess how many times our
phone rang? Once.

You can rest assured that MoonStar is now in the market for a new
bandwidth provider. MoonStar's official opinion is that Verizon sucks.

Lon Stockton
MoonStar bbs
Fri Sept 15 18:45:00 2006
The trouble ticket with our provider is still open with no ETR. Voices have been raised and we have been assured that it is still being worked on. We are contacting our provider at regular intervals and have been requesting escalations to the highest level possible.

It appears that the delays are due to internal arguments about who is responsible and who actually needs to go the site of the outage. If they would have told us where it is we could have probably made it there ourselves by now ;-)

We will update when we hear further. In the meantime thank you for your patience and the supportive words have been much appreciated. We are doing everything within our power.
Fri Sept 15 11:13:00 2006
We have just been informed that the technicians have determined the
problem, which is apparently a blown circuit card in a telco CO somewhere.
Supposidly, a replacement card is enroute to said CO for a replacement; as
soon as the card is replaced, service is expected to resume.

*sigh* I wistfully remember the day, only a handful of years ago, when a
blown card in a CO was identified and replaced within an hour or two. If
an outage was 6+ hours, it was definately a fiber cut or something equally
difficult to find and fix. But that was prior to the current
administration's penchant for doing whatever the big telcos want, allowing
them to push the competiton out of the water. Now that they have, the
service levels are beginning to suck. Now it takes them 6+ hours to
simply identify a blown card (which *should* reveal itself fairly
instantly)....and they haven't even fixed it yet, they just know what's
wrong. Grrr.

Lon Stockton
MoonStar bbs

P.S. In better news, the Battle of the Bands at the Five County Fair is
shaping up to be a good show. Tomorrow night. 7pm. Fairgrounds. :)
Fri Sept 15 06:53:07 2006
At 4:24am, both of MoonStar's connections to the internet backbone went
down. Trouble tickets with our provider have been opened; we have not yet
heard any details or ETR from them as of yet. Given that it's been over
two hours, we're assuming that this outage is fairly widespread and they
are swamped. We'll send updates as they become available to us.

Given the time of the outage, I'm guessing a circuit card somewhere
decided to start malfunctioning, or possibly some emergency
maintenance/repair operation went terribly wrong. Don't think there'd be
any substance-abusing backhoe operators up at this time of the morning. :)

Anyway, although we're currently disconnected from the outside world, you
can still access your email, and feel free to send any email you need to,
as our system will simply hold it until the lines come back up.

Lon Stockton
MoonStar bbs

P.S. check out the Five County Fair website http://fivecountyfair.org/
Tue Jul 11 14:00:00 2006
It appears, at least as far as our circuit is concerned, the outage is over. We have not had the official word from our provider but we have heard that there was a fiber cut somewhere in the Lynchburg area and it may have even been more than one. It looks like it came back right around 2:00 pm so that was around 3 hours outage.

Many services in the area other than our connection to the internet seem to have been effected. Some cell phone services were experiencing problems, some long distance numbers were unreachable, credit card payment processing was out for some and some of the banks couldn't process any deposits/transactions. Since we are back online it seems reasonable to assume, if they have not already, these services should be restored soon.

Please accept our apologies on behalf of the responsible phone company. There currently seems to be some debate as to which one in particular is responsible.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled surfing, already in progress .....
Tue Jul 11 13:06:12 2006
The last update we received is that the trouble has been traced down to an area which is in Sprint's territory so our provider is contacting Sprint to investigate further.
Tue Jul 11 11:30:00 2006
Our connection to the internet went down at approximately 11:00 am. It has been reported to our provider and a trouble ticket has been opened. Some long distance services and cell phone services in the area also appear to be having problems which usually indicates an issue with one of the phone companies involved and is often due to one of the their fibers being cut.

We'll pass along more information when we get an update. You will still be able to access your (and other MoonStar users') website(s). You can also send email, although it will be held here until
the line comes back up.