Today is Sonic.net’s 18th birthday. Founded by Dane Jasper and Scott Doty on July 26th of 1994, “Sonoma Interconnect” (SonIc) has grown beyond our local roots to be the top rated Internet access provider in the nation. (BroadbandReports, top US score, 4.53/5.00)

Our team took some time today to celebrate eighteen excellent years.

Based upon a confidential survey of our staff members by the North Bay Business Journal, Sonic.net has been honored as one of the “North Bay Business Journal’s Best Places to Work”.

We really appreciate this honor, and the candid feedback from our team here. I work with an amazing group of individuals, and I am very excited about where we are all headed together.

Thank you.

-Dane Jasper

One of the many benefits of working at Sonic.net is a ping-pong table in the break room, here Jasper and Augie exercise that benefit.

Did I mention we’re hiring? http://sonic.net/jobs/ Table tennis skills not required, but it can’t hurt.

Note : we have paddles, Jasper and I just believe that purists of the sport choose not to use them.

Sonic.net is looking for several motivated individuals to join our Customer Support team. Our Customer Support representatives are the front line of Sonic.net technical Support and residential sales. You will be responsible for logically troubleshooting with our customers, over the phone and through email, to ensure Internet, web and email access through multiple types of broadband and connectivity services.

As a Customer Support representative, we believe you will be the most qualified representative to discuss and sell Sonic.net residential services to potential users. Because of this, Customer Support representatives must be technologically savvy, exhibit exceptional communication skills and be motivated to provide the best customer service possible in many unique situations.

Customer Support is available from 6am-11pm, Monday-Friday and 8am-10pm, Saturday and Sunday. We are seeking full-time employees and will typically work around most schedules.

Requirements
Familiarity with both Windows and Apple OS
Basic knowledge of networking and dial-up hardware
Working understanding of common internet browsers and mail client
Excellent verbal and written communication abilities

Hands on experience with broadband services, Linux shell and networking skills are beneficial, but not required.

To Apply
Fill out an application and a short quiz at our headquarters at 8am on Sunday July 31st. At 9:30 we will post the list of applicants we will be interviewing. Interviews will take place on site throughout the day.

Sonic.net
2260 Apollo Way
Santa Rosa, CA 95407

Benefits
Health, Dental and Vision Plans
Educational Benefits
401(k)
High Speed Internet Access
Dog Friendly Workplace
On-Site Gym
Arcade
All You can Eat Popcorn
Casual Work Environment

We are holding an open house for Customer Support applicants on Saturday, January 15th , 2011 at Sonic.net Headquarters. Please arrive from 8am-9am on Saturday Morning.

The first 30 arrivals will be held for interviews. Please come prepared with a resume and references. You may also wish to bring snacks and something to do as we plan to conduct interviews until 1pm.

For more information about the position and to apply on-line please visit the jobs page: http://sonic.net/jobs/tech.shtml

For directions and contact information please visit our “Contact Us” page: http://www.sonic.net/contactus.shtml

We look forward to seeing you there!

Our prototype Core4 CRAC System may be the most energy efficient CRAC system deployed in the world to date but we didn’t stop there.  It’s notoriously difficult to maintain good water chemistry in cooling towers and it usually involves a combination of harsh and very expensive chemicals to control scale, corrosion, algae and bacterial growth.  Also, towers are typically running with low cycles of concentration to keep the overall TDS low (to prevent scale) so a lot of chemical laden water just ends up going down the drain as ‘blow down.’  Sean McNeil, our Water Conservation Representatives from the City of Santa Rosa’s Utility Department, not only helped us retrofit our building with dual flush toilets and ultra low flush urinals, he also turned us on to a system that promised to control all aspects of water chemistry in our cooling towers without the use of any added chemicals and without any blow down at all.

Thanks to Skasol and WCTI, we now have a ZBT system installed and expect to save more than 12,000 gallons of water a month and have eliminated all of the environmental impact associated with typical water treatment solutions.  The savings in both water and chemicals along with the rebate from the City as part of their Sustained Reduction program also made this a very cost effective solution.  Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too.

If you’ve been paying attention to our Status blog, you may have noticed a good number of network backbone maintenance posts recently. This is because we’re nearing completion on a number of huge network upgrades, and I’d like to take a little time to talk about these milestones for Sonic.net.

All of these upgrades relate to Sonic.net’s existing network backbone, which is currently a ring between our Santa Rosa, San Francisco and San Jose POPs. Our San Francisco and San Jose POPs current Juniper M40 core routers are being upgraded to Juniper T320s. The T320s are absolutely beastly, measuring 25x17x31″, capable of drawing nearly 3kW of power, and weighing in at nearly 400lb! The T320s in San Francisco and San Jose will have an 10Gbps transport links between them, and one 10Gbps link apiece to the T320 that will be installed at our new Palo Alto POP. This will create a new, highly redundant 10Gbps backbone for Sonic.net, and allow us to easily expand our backbone capacity as bandwidth needs continue to increase.

We’ve been working tirelessly on these projects for the past few months, and plan to have them completed very soon now. As always, we at Sonic.net strive to keep one step ahead of demand, and provide access to the most reliable network possible. Keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks for news about our progress on these upgrades!

-Jared, Nathan, Tim, Clay, Monroe, Josh, Juston, Matt, Jacob, and Tomoc

For the next fifteen days we will be running a contest on Twitter where we will give away free Internet service for a year!

We will give away one year of free Internet service (traditional AT&T line shared DSL as fast as we can, or Fusion at up to 30mbps, CA only) every day for 15 days to celebrate our 15th anniversary.

The contest will be run over Twitter, entrants have to use the hashtag #sonicnet .

One entry will be chosen at random every day for fifteen days from the mentions of #sonicnet during the past day.  Each mention is an entry, but please don’t over-tweet, spammers won’t be winners.

One win per person, win is transferable if you’re in an area we do not serve (you are welcome to give it away or sell it).

Winners’ Circle

Sonic.net Death Monkeys are leading the way with 2 wins and 1 loss for the 2009 Summer Adult Softball Season. We have a great team full of talent and are having a lot of fun. Games are played weekly on Monday nights till mid-August at Rincon Valley Community Park on the Montectio Blvd side. Santa Rosa, Ca. Game times are 6pm and 7:10 and vary from week to week. Please come out and enjoy a game, the great American past time and Sonic.net!

Come one, come all the Sonic.net Death Monkeys have their season opener tonight!

Game starts 7:15pm at Rincon Valley Park, Montecito Blvd, Santa Rosa.

We’ve got a great team this year from all departments of Sonic.net. Please come and join us.

Thank you for your support

~Jenny and Kim