Netserve Service Status

There has been a level of keenness exhibited by our real time block list that is rarely seen in this day and age.

IP's are being added for relays that have either mailed an domain that has not had any addresses for six years (which most of the ISP's are falling into), and for sending mails which spam assassin is quite frankly surprised with (i.e. a score of 10 or above - where 4 is probably spam, and 6 is a very very safe bet). If the IP is in there - its not by accident

If you are being troubled by this - drop us a mail (WITH message source / full headers) to support [@] nsnoc . com - and we will find out why the addresses are in there and get back to you.

We are currently working on means to display this information to you and put in an application for removal online.

Meanwhile we are dropping LOADS of spam and the statistics also make great reading (if you dont get out much) - which cannot be a bad thing

A button has been clicked on our admin panel that should not have been clicked.

If you are the proud recipient of a somewhat overly keen email warning you of a domain that is expiring, and its not due until say 'October' ... then you can safely put it down to the wonders of automation and human error, and bin it.

Buttons are not toys. Sorry.

We have made an adjustment to our spam scanning servers.

Mails that are getting past the various publicly available remote block list checks that are being passed on to our modified Spam Assassin (we check this at SMTP time, so we are able to reject BEFORE accepting - which is pretty neat really). All high scoring mails are being stored with domain and source IP. This is being punched into a database and in turn into a zone file, allowing us to create our very own RBL listing.

Multiple occurrences of different mails from the same IP are being counted giving us a little statistical background.

For all those 'nay sayers' out there; We are currently rejecting around 89% (24th Jan 07 a primary mx machine took 6262 mail transactions. 550 were dropped, 41974 were rejected*) of inbound mail to our anti spam cluster, and that's BEFORE we accept the mails for further processing.

We thought we would like to share a little success story with you.

Drop us a mail to find out more about our spam scanning configuration or applying it to your domain.

*These figures were double checked since even we found them hard to believe.

We are currently moving the slave database for the IMAP and POP daemons. We envisage this will take no longer than 10 minutes. This may mean that in the meanwhile connections will be a little slower or time out.

The move will result in improved redundancy in the mail system, and better use of available resources.

We have exceeded our WHOIS lookup quota on .UK domains as we approach 5pm. This was due to a high volume of registrations / renewals. We have been informed this will be lifted within 40 minutes - we are sorry for the inconvenience, please do try back later - meanwhile other TLD's are working fine.

We have experienced some abnormalities with our transit provision today. We have reason to believe these lie within the Telecomplete / Thus networks, outside of our control.

They have so far just been for a matter of minutes, however we are aware of and are further monitoring the situation.

We are currently awaiting a cable request to go through to connect us to our port to London for transit. This is being supplied via NWIX. ManAP via NWIX already supply the majority of our peering transit.

We are also waiting on the arrival of three new 3000va UPS devices for the racks in the data centre, which will be fitted next month. It would appear that the buildings UPS there cannot be trusted currently, so this is an extra insurance policy for our sanity and your uptime. The goal of which is to keep core services alive for a short time, and shut them down neatly as opposed to dropping them from a height.

We will need some down time to fit the UPS units both into the rack space and to attach core systems to them. We will give 24 hours notice of this maintenance window here.

We are currently experiencing some slowness in SQL replication. This will be effecting DNS and mail on non primary servers. We are aware of the issue and working on it. Recent changes may not be reflected consistently until this issue it resolved.
[1421 Update] Replicating and resolved.

At this moment in time all servers appear to be working as expected and all
services running as normal.

If you have any issues or find that something is not working as you would
expect please email support [@] nsnoc.com.

Email support will continue this evening through to 1am to minimise any
issues arising from the power failure.

As soon as we have a report on the fault from IFL we will provide details to
customers via this page.

[Incident 12:50]
We have a complete power failure at the IFL2 data centre around 12:50 today.


All services including web, email, ADSL and DNS are affected.

[Update 15:33]
We have power, and some connectivity. First boxes back to life around 1335, although without connectivity from transit providers, and peering suppliers (many with routers in same installation).

We are bringing up services where we can. Some hardware has not come back from the hard off of a lack of power, but aim to return basic services as quickly as possible.

There has been no feedback from IFL as yet as to why or how their feeds/UPS/generators did not pick up the ball.

Please resist the temptation to call in - we will return services as quickly as we are able to diagnose and implement solutions or work arounds. It is currently impossible to deliver an ETA, as we do not know all of the factors involved.


[Update 16:20]
POP and IMAP are operational, inbound mail and relay are operational, primary web cluster is operational. There is currently no FTP service currently. The smaller clusters two and three are being worked on. A number of virtual server hosts need further attention.

Service -WILL- be slower while we catch up with any backlogs, and further interruptions are not out of the question as we finalise a short term solution (including an imminent restart of the main file storage machines).


The cause is still unknown - other than a power failure on our floor of the IFL2 installation.


[Update 21:03]
Nearly all services now up and running. Exceptions being a virtual server host machine and one web server.

Loads are running high in the absence of some SQL slaves, otherwise services are returning to normality.

IFL have informed us that a mains power tripped and went to battery which then presented a series of faults; this in turn caused a power failure on the second floor of the building. Individual rack trips then slowed a return to service as power was restored. Power is currently being supplied direct from mains until the UPS can be tested and recommissioned tomorrow.

There are new versions available for two common CMS systems Word Press
and phpBB - 23rd December and 5th January respectively. Security holes
in your site could allow anything from denial of service to
defacement.
Please make sure you keep abreast of updates on these (and other)
engines. While updates are a pain in the short term, they are in
investment in long term security.

We have recently sent out emails to obvious phpBB sites, and are
awaiting responses / updates.

Mails will be going out to obvious WP users this week, however since
you
are ahead of the game you may also wish to subscribe to the following
feed: http://wordpress.org/development/category/security/

Please check your permission settings after any install!

From 3rd Jan 2007 new .com registrations will cost only £4.68 plus vat
for a 12 month registration period.

This price is over £4 cheaper excluding vat than UKreg and 123Reg!!!!

Our offer includes free web and email forwarding, or upgrade to
include 25mb of web space for only £16.99 per year plus vat.

Included Free with the above offer
- Email forwarding
- Web forwarding
- DNS zone management
- 24/7 administration area
- Office hours technical support

OFFER TERMS - January 2007
All prices quoted exclude vat at 17.5%
The offer will run to 31st January 2007
We reserve the right to withdraw, amend or extend this offer at any
time.
No credit terms are available with this offer.
Registrations must be paid for at the time of order by debit / credit
card.
Payments by post, i.e. cheque or postal order cannot be accepted with
this offer.
The discounted price is available for new registrations only.
Renewals will remain at £8.50 plus vat.
.com domains can be ordered from 1 to 10 years at the price of £4.68
plus vat per year.
No further discounts are available on the price.