Email Delays - November 21, 2007 A problem with the scanning service on our relay/backup mail server caused delays from late last night through this morning. This problem has been now fixed and all spooled mail was delivered. No mail was lost.

Email Delays - November 6, 2007 A problem with the primary email server caused delays on mail receiving this morning and also slowness accessing the webmail. These delays have been fixed and all email is now delivering normally.

Spam Filter Service stopped running- November 5, 2007 For several hours the spam filter service on our mail server stopped running and all spam started being delivered. This was fixed around 9:30am this morning.

Mail delayed for about 60 minutes - September 18, 2007 No email was lost but there was about a 60 minute delay on new mail mid afternoon today due to a glitch between our backup mail spooler and our primary email server. This has now been resolved and email is currently being delivered.

Mail Server to be Offline for 30 minutes - September 14, 2007 The primary mail server will be offline for between 30 to 45 minutes for routine maintenance starting around 11pm this evening. No mail will be lost as all incoming email will be redirected to our backup mail spooler and then will be all delivered to the primary mail server, once it comes back online.

Sacramento area DSL Circuit Rebuild - April 19, 2007 - A total rebuild of the underlying circuit in the Sacramento area for our DSL customers resulted in about an hour of downtime very early this morning around 1am. This rebuild only affected DSL customers in the Sacramento area. All Sacramento DSL accounts are currently functioning as normal. 

Mail Server Now - April 10, 2007 - problems with bringing on board a new outgoing mail server (SMTP) are being worked on now. Update --> The sending mail problems have been fixed - tested off and on network ok.

Mail Server Now - March 14, 2007 Our DHCP provider lost some configuration information for our DSL circuits briefly this afternoon due to a programming error. The issue was fixed at 4:30pm. Typically a full restart of your computer and a full shut down of your DSL modem will restore your connectivity.

Mail Server Now Upgraded - February 26, 2007 - at 3am this morning we upgraded our mail server to the most latest current stable version. This has fixed the problem mentioned below with not being able to email to yahoo groups.

Additional features were added including increased protection against receiving "image spam" emails - users can now enable security settings against "phishing emails", block "foreign language" emails, choose if you want to receive email Quarantine Reports (list of all emails caught in the quarantine folder), it is now easier to move messages from folder to folder and you can now move messages back to the Inbox. Sending mail through the mail server should be slightly faster with this new upgrade. In addition there was a glitch in which emails over 500K sent from addresses that were in the "blocked senders" list were still getting through to the main inbox. The upgrade has fixed this problem. 

Mail Server Software to be Updated/Upgraded - February 14, 2007 - new updates have come out for our mail server software which include better controls at filtering image spam and other general spam. We will update this software during a usage time such as a weekend morning or evening. Downtime will be kept to a minimum and as always when upgrading our primary mail software, no mail will be lost as our spooler mail server catches email during the upgrade.

Upstream connectivity issue - February 12, 2007 1030am - one of our upstream providers is dropping large packets causing timeouts - especially with email. We are working to have this resolved asap - as this was the same problem that crept up this past Friday. No eta at the moment but as soon as possible.

Update 12pm - users using webmail are now able to send and delete mail.

Yahoo Email Issue Update - February 10, 2007 - After 14 days Yahoo has finally fixed the email issues - and @pon.net addresses can now email @yahoo.com addresses from webmail and any conventional email program. Regarding the yahoo groups email problem - this is slated to be fixed with an upgrade of our mail program coming very soon.

Yahoo Email Issue Update - February 5, 2007 815pm - we have gone round and round with Yahoo and there is still no resolution. If you are unable to email yahoo.com email addresses, please submit your complaint using their form: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/mail/cgi_retest Item number 3 in their form needs to be 216.229.96.251 - Item number 4 in their form is the bounce back message that you get after trying to send to a yahoo.com email address.

Yahoo Email Issue Update II - February 5, 2007 12pm - We are still trying to have Yahoo fix the problem where @pon.net emails cannot email @yahoo.com emails - we will post an update as soon as this is resolved - we have been in correspondence with them again this morning.

Yahoo Email Issue - January 30, 2007 6pm - We are currently working with Yahoo's Network Operations center to fix an issue where @pon.net email customers are not able to email @yahoo.com domains. No ETA at the moment - but we hope to have this resolved asap.

Mail Server Issue - December 1, 2006 11:15am - There was an issue with the primary mail server that may have resulted in slow Webmail, IMAP, and POP3 mail access; or not being able to access mail at all. UPDATE: This issue was resolved at approximately 11:35am and all services test out OK.

Dialup Outage - November 1, 2006 420pm- There is a dialup outage effecting certain areas in Northern and Central California. We will post an ETA as soon as this is resolved. Update: Service has been restored. Total outage about 15 minutes.

Dialup Outage - October 26, 2006 9:53am-10:08am - There was a 15 minute dialup outage that effected certain areas in Northern and Central California that was resolved at 10:08am.
 
Mail Server Update II - October 11, 2006 Primary mail server is going offline for 5-10 minutes this morning around 1030am. New drive is being installed, and drive with data that is backed up is being taken out so data recovery program can be run to attempt to fixed email.pon.net/oldwebmail as well as recover the Trusted/Blocked Senders and Message rules.

Mail Server Update - October 10, 2006 445PM During maintenance recently the mirrored Hard Drives failed on our primary mail server. After a very lengthy process the mail has been recovered.

If you notice your email and subfolders are still missing, please email support@pon.net and request we add your mail back. All Network updates are available at: http://www.pon.net/status/index.htm

Northern California Dialup Outage - August 26, 2006 5:00pm We are currently experiencing dialup issues in California.  We are working to resolve this outage as soon as possible.

Sacramento, San Diego, and Bakersfield LATA's are NOT affected. We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your patience in this matter. Update: The outage in California has been resolved. 532pm

Northern California Dialup Outage - August 25, 2006 3:30pm - We are currently experiencing issues with our POP's in the Northern California region.  Users may experience intermittent busy signals or operator error messages.  We are working on resolving the issue and determining the cause of the outage.  ~Jesse

Update: Our Data provider in the N. Cal area has resolved the issue.  Total outage time was approximately 1 hour.  -Jesse

Webserver, RAM Addition August 10, 2006 7am - One of our webservers (IP's ending in 216.229.100.## will be offline for up to 10 minutes due to the addition of more RAM. RAM will help increase the overall performance the server. Update: this was done successfully this morning. Total downtime was about 5 mins ~ Tom

Mail Server down 4 minutes at 6pm- August 9, 2006 6pm - Additional RAM was added to the primary mail server this late afternoon. This will help the overall performance of the server and you may see faster load times regarding webmail http://email.pon.net ~ Frank

Mail Server down for Maintenance - August 9, 2006 12:01AM - The primary mail server will be offline tonight for approximately 2 hours for software maintenance and hardware troubleshooting.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

4.73 Earthquake hits Santa Rosa  - August 2, 2006 - Earthquake hit at 8:08pm - initial reports 4.73 on Richter scale centered near Glen Ellen. No Pacific Online systems were effected.

Home.pon.net Websites currently offline - July 27th, 2006 - We are moving this server to another location and expect these sites to be offline for another 30 mins to 1 hour. ~ David 10:00am

Update: home.pon.net sites are all back online and moved to their new location.

Power Outage All Day Sunday July 16, 2006 - July 16th, 2006 - Pacific Online main office is managing a power outage all day today. Equipment is on generator backup.

56K Dialup Numbers Changing by August 4, 200 - July 11th, 2006 - Pacific Online is changing all 56k dialup numbers by August 4, 2006. This change allows us to provide more than 40% more dialup numbers nationwide. An email was sent out on July 11th regarding this change - Details are available here about which new dialup number to use for your location and how to switch the dialup number in your computer to the new one

Home.pon.net Websites - April 26, 2006 (12:50pm) - home.pon.net websites are currently offline - as we are working on a problem that just developed with the server. We are working on having these sites back up as soon as possible. Older version of sites back up and running - still working on getting current version up and running. 4pm

Mail Problem - April 24, 2006 - 12pm we are working on resolving a webmail problem. Update April 25, 2006 - New webmail service has been restored

Webmail Upgraded
April 4, 2006 - 3:05pm Webmail in process of being upgraded.
                     4:00pm Webmail upgraded and usable

DSL Outage
Jan 30, 2006 - 2:30pm Several of our DSL customers are experiencing outages at this time. We are working to resolve the problem and will continue to do so until we have resolution.

UPDATE: (5:30pm) SBC/AT&T appears to have successfully resolved this afternoon's DSL outage. ~ Pacific Online NOC.

Mail Server Update
Jan 26, 2006 - 2:15pm Webmail & all mail services are back online.

Mail Server Partially Back Up
Jan 26, 2006 - 2pm. We continue to work on this, next item for getting back online is the webmail.

Mail Server down for Emergency Repair
Jan 26, 2006 - 1pm We have had to down the mail server for emergency repair. We are working as quickly as possible to get the mail server back online.

Busy Signals - N. California
Jan 13, 2006 11:30AM - We are currently experiencing busy signals to all our dial up pools ending in 0171.  We have opened a ticket with our data provider & telco in that region and are currently awaiting an ETR.

Update 1:25pm - The problem with busy signals to our dial up pools has been resolved. -Jesse

Patch for .WMF Vulnerability
Updated Jan 5, 2006 6PM - Microsoft released a patch to fix the WMF exploit rathern than waiting for their Jan 10th scheduled update.  All operating systems can get the patch at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com  -Jesse

New Windows Vulnerability
Updated Jan 3, 2006 8:06AM - Microsoft has acknowledge a vulnerability in all versions of the Microsoft Windows operating systems.  The WMF exploit allows embeded code on remote sites to install spyware or viruses on the local machines

•In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker would have to host a Web site that contains a Web page that is used to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit a malicious Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade them to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link that takes them to the attacker's Web site.

•In an E-mail based attack involving the current exploit, customers would have to be persuaded to click on a link within a malicious e-mail or open an attachment that exploited the vulnerability. At this point, no attachment has been identified in which a user can be attacked simply by reading mail.

Pacific Online recommends updating your anti-virus software, maintaining anti-spyware software, and keeping up to do date with all windows update.  Full information is available Here
-Jesse

New Virus
Dec 20, 2005 8:06AM - A new variant of the Bagel worm is being seen this morning. It sends a message with a small 6 - 15k zip file with a random persons name (i.e. Douglas.zip).  At this time it is not being caught by any of the major virus scanners.  We have temporarily put a filter in place to block all emails containing zip files between 1k and 100k in size. -Jesse