Month: January 2002

We have put up a new POP in Santa Rosa to…

Thu Jan 31 16:33:02 PST 2002 — We have put up a new POP in Santa Rosa to help with the busy signals on 522-1003. If you would like to help test this new capacity you can do so by changing your dialup number to 636-1001.

Sonic.net, Inc. is not responsible for any toll charges that may be incurred by calling (or configuring your computer to use) this number. If you are not certain that the number is a local (non-toll) call for you, check the phone book or dial 0 (zero) and ask for “Rate Information”.

If you could please send your results from using this new pop to support@sonic.net and in the subject line put ‘ATTN: Linuxnut RE: new POP’ we would greatly appreciate it.. Thanks. – Steve

Sonic.net is pleased to announce the…

Tue Jan 29 12:12:00 PST 2002 — Sonic.net is pleased to announce the availability of our newest broadband Internet access product, Rooftop. Sonic.net’s Rooftop service offers high speed broadband access using wireless technology from industry leader Nokia.

For full information or to place an order, please visit:

www.sonic.net/sales/rooftop/

The speed of Internet access available from Sonic.net’s Rooftop service is similar to DSL, from 384k-1.0Mbps. As with DSL, static IP addresses are provided and a total of five email boxes are included with the service. Of course, all of the usual Sonic.net services are also available, including our award winning technical support.

Rooftop service is reliable and secure, and can be installed quickly. We anticipate high demand for Rooftop service and installation will be on a first come, first served basis. We suggest you order as soon as possible to assure the quickest installation.

Initially, Rooftop service from Sonic.net will be available in Rohnert Park and in the Fountaingrove Southridge area of Santa Rosa. If you are located outside these areas, feel free to place an order to indicate your interest, and when we have availability in your area, we will let you know.

We have just upgraded the beta test version…

Tue Jan 29 15:27:45 PST 2002 — We have just upgraded the beta test version of SpamAssassin to the new release of 2.1. Version 2.1 has a number of improvements over 1.5 including auto whitelisting, much better tuning of scores and new rules. You can turn SpamAssassin on with the SpamCan tool in the membertools. For more information please see our local news group dedicated to spam filtering, news://news.sonic.net/sonic.antispam Please note that any customizations to your .spamassassin.cf have not been carried over into the new version. The configuration files have been moved, please see the news group for more information. -Kelsey

We’re experiencing some busy signals on our…

Mon Jan 28 19:54:14 PST 2002 — We’re experiencing some busy signals on our 1003 and 9811 dialup groups. We’ve got new dialups numbers ending in 9606 which can be swapped one for one with the 9811 numbers if you run into busy signals. Additional capacity in the 1003 group (actually serving 1001 and 1002) should be coming online tomorrow. -Dane

We have added a new local news group to our…

Fri Jan 25 11:08:42 PST 2002 — We have added a new local news group to our news server, ‘sonic.announce’. The MOTD is now being posted there as well as on the shell servers, email list and on our website. We will also use this group to post other announcements regarding services, special offers or other bits of information that we’d like to pass on to our users. -Kelsey

It has come to our attention that Network…

Fri Jan 25 16:37:12 PST 2002 — It has come to our attention that Network Solutions/VeriSign is sending renewal notices to the owners of recently transferred domains. These notices are being been sent via email and regular mail asking for the renewal of domain names that are no longer registered through Network Solutions/VeriSign. These notices may also contain stern warnings of how you may lose your domain name if you do not renew through them. If you have recently transferred a domain name to our registry, you may receive one of more of these renewal notices from Network Solutions/VeriSign. Be advised that you may disregard any mailings from Network Solutions/VeriSign requesting domain renewal. Your domain is safely registered through the Sonic.net registry and not under the control of Network Solutions/VeriSign.

-Chuckc

We have identified the root cause of the…

Thu Jan 24 17:39:13 PST 2002 — We have identified the root cause of the authentication failures after a lot of head scratching and bug crushing. As it turned out the problem was not where we were focusing our attention, the RADIUS authentication servers, or cucipop, the POP3 server software, but the underlying NIS libraries on our administrative server where the POP3 servers were being compiled. As it turns out the unthinkable was occurring: getpwnam() was not returning the correct struct to cucipop and hence the RADIUS server was receiving the wrong username with the right password. Compiling cucipop on a mail server resolved the bug and fixed all of the failures. Special kudos to Nathan for his diligence in tracking this problem down to it’s end! Before identifying that it was a core system library problem we replaced ypbind and ypserv, the NIS processes which resolve usernames on our servers, with new versions. Although it didn’t resolve the problems it turned out to be a good upgrade anyway since the new versions appear to perform better than the old. We made numerous other bug fixes and upgrades to cucipop and our RADIUS authentication library as well, including the use of proper serialized sequence numbers.

There are public stats available in Cricket at www.sonic.net/stats which show the dramatic drop in errors on the POP3 server. (Servers -> Mail -> ‘Mail Server Aggregate’ Errors)

-Kelsey, Nathan, Russ, Matt and Scott

Shell access now requires verification of…

Wed Jan 23 08:43:17 PST 2002 — Shell access now requires verification of customer identity by technical support before initial use. This one-time verification is designed to prevent late night sign-ups by individuals using stolen credit cards who then use shell.sonic.net as a platform for hacking, launching denial of service (DOS) attacks, IRC proxies and bots and other annoying behaviors. These actions cause problems with IRC servers who may blacklist us, and the impact a DOS attack from our dual T3 links can have on a smaller remote site can be crippling for them.

Any customers who have used the shell server in the past month and a half have been tagged as verified and have access currently. Customers who have not recently used the shell or who are new customers and need access to the shell server should contact support via email or phone for a brief call-back verification of contact information and identity.

This additional one-time security measure benefits all of our customers, as the impact of these behaviors, particularly the DOS attacks, can impact dialup, hosting and all other access. -Dane, Eli, Kelsey, Russ, ScottR