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.
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