What's not new at lucketts.net? This is the news archive page.
22 Jun 2005 part 2– Anti-SPAM program called SPAMAssassin is now running on the Lucketts.net mail server. There was a pretty serious threadt with the newest trojan emails recently, and I had to stop them. Emailis that looked like they were from Lucketts.net admin were being sent out with vituses attached. They were produced by an infected machine out there somewhere (I have the IP adresses). Thje trojan would look through the infected machines email contact list and send emails to everyone on it pretending to be the admin from the target's domain. Of course the trojan was included in the attached zip file and would have infected anyone's machine that opened it. This trojan didn't stop with just mailing everyone on the list. It would guess names and send mails to the domains it discovered with those random names. I caught on when the mail server started complaining about emails to jimmyjoe-bob@lucketts.net. SPAMAssassin was set up and ready to go on Lucketts.net so I just turned it back on. The Taylorstown mail server does not have SPAMAssassin yet, as it is tricky to install without impacting current mail service. I'll find a nice quiet time on the weekend to install it. {[5:30 update: SPAMAssassin is now installed on Taylorstown.net. It was easier than I remembered.]
AP4 on Chapel Lane started turning itself off recently. It would shut down once a week, then daily, then on Monday it shut itself down 3 or 4 times. I replaced it with a new AP Monday night, but that model did not like the etherant 3 radios that are already deployed to a few homes. I had to go back out Tuesday and replace it with one of the older models that does work with all the radios. Let me know if you have any more problems connecting. The relay to Chapel will be upgraded later this week, and that should also improve speeds to the customer.
AP8 to Taylorstown and Lovettsville disconnected itself Tuesday morning at 430 AM. I didn't discover it until 7:30 when I turned on email and found that there were a bunch of early-birds already trying to work. After a quick trip up the mountain it was up and running again at 8:00AM. The redundant circuit is installed, but I haven't set it up to automatically switch over yet. Automatic switching is nice, but tricky. It tends to switch when you do not want it to and drop everyone for a minute while the connection re-establishes. I have to sit up there some afternoon when the problems have calmed down and properly balance it. Probably over a weekend when the business users are not on-line. I'll send out an email warning at least a day in advance.
13 Jun 2005 part 2– Caught up now with mountian access point to Lovettsville. There are now 2 working access points on the mountain and 2 backbone links getting data to the access points. The masts are secured tightly with guy wires and a grounding system is installed to help preclude further lightning damage. If everything stays stable for a couple of days, I'll try turning on the high speed data link to the mountaintop.
AP10 was toasted by lightning today. Nobody is using that AP now, so no impact other than to the host of the site who has no access. Replacements will be here Tuesday PM.
AP4 upgrade that was placed on hold is back on the schedule. Will install high speed backbone to that site this week. Should perk up performance there considerably.
Did I mention that grounding is a good thing? If your radio is on a pole you should consider grounding it to help prevent dropouts. I'm doing that now for all access points, and may start doing it as an routine part of the normal installation.
10 Jun 2005 part 2– I removed the old Access Point from the roof of my home and replaced it with a nice, new, more compatible one. It will carry the load around Lucketts Rd until I get the new sector antenna and radio installed that will serve everyone to the West. The tower will serve everyone to the East. Assuming no asteroids strike (or other unexpected event) I'll finish tuning the current set of servers then start upgrading the remote access points to add high speed links and redundancy.
If you have a problem, please let me know. Don't just assume it's you. You might be the first to notice a system wide problem, and early notification can greatly improve repair time. One thing I ask is that you first try rebooting your machines before calling. Turn them all off, and then back on, with the closest to lucketts.net turned on first. For example, turn on your Etherant radio, turn on your wireless router, turn on your RF bridge, turn on your PC. If you still have the problem after that, give me a call or page me if urgent.
10 Jun 2005 – I picked a fine week to give up drinking... Here's a recap of highlights: Power to AP8 knocked out by construction accident. Large thunderstorm bends over AP8 30ft mast; Surges knock radios off air and everyone forgets to reboot before calling; T1 & phone lines dug up by neighbor's posthole digger; New radio backbone installed, but it refuses to work with any existing client radios; 30 ft Mast can be lowered and repaired by one person, but takes 2 to raise back up (oops); New high speed link installed to AP8, immune to rain!!!; AP8 high speed link not immune to lightning, $800 radio toasted by near direct lightning strike before I could put it in service; assorted other emergencies.
I'm sorry if I've been short with anyone or haven't resolved a problem to your satisfaction. It's been an unexpected struggle keeping the network online this past week. I am working the big problems full time and there are resolution plans in place for each. Please hang in a there and you'll be impressed. And to the Lovettsville/Taylorstown folks... this is not normal. You should expect to receive, and I expect to provide uninterrupted service. It will be so.
3 Jun 2005 – Network status: All Lucketts Access Points are operating at full speed. A few of the customers near my place are flipping between two accesspoints, and that causes occasional disconnects while the radio negotiates the new connection. I'm looking at ways to keep the redundency of two APs while preventing the flipping between APs.
Taylorstown and Lovettsville are still not running at full speed. The rain hasn't helped. Jim cleared some trees out of the signal path before the rain, but there were still drop-outs today. There are two APs serving this area, and one of them appears to be dropping connections on its own regardless of the rain. The other, lower, AP is working like a champ but it's not as high. I also installed a new 802.11a high speed link last week but so far that link has not worked.
Here's the plan to fix the drop-outs, both weather related and otherwise. We'll continue to clear leaves from the path of the existing link in an attempt to improve its reliability. It will stay in place as a backup link. The non-functional 802.11a link will come down and I'll replace it with a dedicated 802.11b/g link. I just recieved a pair of very high powered, long-range radios that work with the new routing AP on the tallest pole on the mountaintop. I'll increase the size of the power supply to this AP and install the high power radio. A very high gain antenna will be used to provide a very narrow beam to a matching radio/antenna at my property. This dedicated link will shoot above the trees, avoiding weather problems, and giving a high speed routed connection that will fix some of the more minor problems that you are not even noticing because of the weather problems. While that is in place, I'll work with shorter range 802.11a links in he valley to get more experience with them, with the eventual goal of getting the 11a link re-established to the mountaintop. Esimated implementation day: Sunday.
29 May 2005 – AP0 (the primary access Point on the roof of my house) is on it's last legs. It still downloads fine, but the upload just doesn't work anymore. I believe the storm from a few weeks ago had damaged it as well, but it's just getting around to failing. Later today, I'll be putting it down. The replacement is here and being tested with installation this afternoon. Between now and then, browsing the internet works, but uploading anything (including email) will be painfully slow. Looks like all three access points on my property (on three different poles) were damaged by the storm and have been replaced (or will be shortly).
21 May 2005 – Last spring was easy when we only had 20 customers. New customers please kick me if I suggest putting up an antenna in an "easy" location for now and coming back to move it later. With all of the leaves coming out now, it's "later" now. The worst problem was the new Taylorsville Access Point. Signal started dropping there on Monday and by Friday it was unusable. Physics to the rescue, and with a big radar dish installed, Taylorsville and Lovettsville are back on line. Jim and I also tested a 20ft extension for the antenna pole, and that greatly improved the reception and will also improve the signal to the customers west of Furnace Mountain. We'll install an additional AP and relay on the taller pole Monday night.
Some have asked about backup power supplies for Lucketts.net. We have UPS on all of our equipment and a generator on the property to run everything if power goes out for more than a few minutes. I was planning on upgrading to an auto-start generator this spring, but that has been delayed. Now that I'm managing the network full time, I can start the generator by hand for awhile longer. The money can be better spent on upgrades to the data backbone to improve reliability. Occasionally a power hit that lasts longer than 30 minutes might slip through, but the increase in reliability by providing redundant data backbone will more than make up for the occasional power hit.
The damage to the network during the storm last week was not due to power surges on the AC power grid. Lightning storms can induce electrical surges in the equipment itself, over wires leading to and from the equipment, and even in large metal objects such as towers that connect to the equipment. An UPS or even a power line surge supressor cannot protect you against induced surges. I mentioned last year that everyone should consider using a surge arrestor for the cables leading from their antennas to the interior of their homes. If I had taken my own advise sooner, I wouldn't have lost $2200 worth of equipment last week. I now have a good grounding system and surge arrestors on all long wire runs. Anyone with an outdoor antenna should consider doing the same.
Steve now works for Tammy rather than his old company, and Tammy expects Steve to actually work for a living. There will be new services offered by Lucketts.net in the very near future. PC repair, virus cleaning, spyware cleaning, network installation, house calls, etc will be offered soon. Pricing is being considered and a new list of services will be published soon. Thanks everyone for helping us build the business to the point where we can make it our full time job, and thank you for your patience while we work through the growing pains.
14 May 2005 – Just as the new antenna came online (sorry for the hour drop to 4 of you on that access point) a surge from the thunderstorm took out the tower access point. I scrambled to find what was blown out this time, and it appears that a main switch and the access point itself are toast. Needless to say, on Sunday I'm going to revisit my grounding strategy. Until then, the new AP with the cool new antenna is taking the operational load from everyone to the west that was using the tower, and AP0 (the original house Access Point) is picking up the tower refugees from the east in addition to its normal load.
I'll be climbing the tower to replace AP1 either Sunday or Monday. Until then, we are a little more fragile than normal. If anyone is still offline, give me a call up to 10PM Sat night or anytime after 8AM on Sunday and we can get you back online.
13 May 2005 – Trees on the mountain think it springtime or something. Signal has dropped due to leaf growth. The new, very high gain antenna arrived Friday and will be installed 1st thing Sat morning to correct the problem. A custom high-power transmitter has also been ordered and will be here next week to help a little more. This will correct the occasional dropouts experienced west of Furnace Mountain.
2 April 2005 – Transition to the new servers and T1s has started for a few customers. They will get to play with it for awhile to make sure nothing is broken. If all is well, then I'll send out instructions to everyone else for the migration. Note the change of webmail servers! If you are a Taylorstown account you should use the "NEW" webmail link. Everyone else use the "OLD" webmail link until told otherwise.
25 March 2005 – We've been busy. Service is now extended to Taylorstown and Lovettsville. The new Access Point at Montressor is running. The Stumptown Access Point we were testing will be ready to cover Rt 15 next week. The first of the new backbone links should be active in a few days, increasing oerformance of remote Access Points. New email accounts are being prepared so that the new server can take over next weekend. Instructions on how to use the new server are forthcoming. Expect some emails this week.
10 March 2005 – New T1s are installed and the new mail/domain server is running. I'd like to test things for a week then start migrating everyone. If anyone wants to be a trailblazer, email me and I'll transition you first.
7 March 2005 – Quick update on the upgrade plan. The main Access Point was acting up again, so replacing it cannot wait. I'll change it out this afternoon. Most users can be shifted to the backup AP for the 15 minutes needed to do the switch-over, but there may be a brief interruption. Email me if you have a critical connection today and I can coordinate the break with you. Once the new AP is installed, I'll start connecting the new T1 lines. After a couple days of test, I'll start reassigning static IP numbers to customers by email and phone. Later this week or next weekend, I'll climb the tower to replace its AP so that our redundancy is restored. It will be a busy week.
28 Feb 2005 – 11 AM update: Looks like AOL mail is getting through now. I convinced the upstream provider to modify their reverse DNS records, and coincidently the problem stopped. Maybe AOL turned off their new protection schema, or maybe the DNS change solved the problem. Please let me know if you get any more email rejected by AOL.
28 Feb 2005 – There's always something. Looks like AOL has been rejecting large amounts of our email. According to the web, they have just added new security procedures for their email system to reduce SPAM. This has resulted in lots of small ISPs having trouble getting mail through to AOL addresses. If anyone notices lots of rejections from other providers, please let me know. I'm working with DSL.net to fix this. They control our reverse DNS lookup, and that's what AOL is complaining about.
If you have to get a message thru, use a free email account from hotmail or yahoo. I'll get this fixed as soon as possible. You could have your intended email recipient complain to AOL about the abrupt change in AOL policy that has stopped their email.
20 Feb 2005 – Everything is now restored to pre-storm status (or a little better). You'll be glad to know I now have four spare Access points and 6 spare Access Point POE power supplies. I'm shifting my focus back to improving the weak RF links a few customers have so that everyone consistently gets full speed service. The new backbone architecture will take care of many of those problems, especially increasing reliability for those at the end of many relays. The basic design work for the new backbone is done and a vendor has been selected for the equipment. Once the new T1's are activated by AT&T, (1 March) we'll be ready to start the transition.
The new account/domain server is running. When we do the transition, I'll have to re-create everyone's account on the new server. Passwords do not transfer across machines, so I'll have to coordinate with each customer to give you new passwords. These will be emailed to your old account with instructions on how to do the transition. Once that email is send, all subsequent email will be going to the new accounts. I'll send out more detail after I've run a few tests with the new system.
18 Feb 2005 –
The new T1 wires were installed today. Should be another week or two to get the circuits up. I have some time now to get the new servers
up as well. Given the expenses of the past month, now would be a real good time to refer that neighbor that has been complaining about
dialup or satellite.
14 Feb 2005 – Oops, lost an hour of uptime between 630 and 730PM. The new Access Point software installed last week appears to have the same problem we experienced a couple of times in Dec, every day or so it just turns off everyone's connection. I'll replace it tonight with the fixed software we used in Jan. If you notice the network is down, please give me a call. Tonight at 10PM I'll modify the system to add a backup Access Point, so that if we lose one, the other can pick up the load. That should double the reliability for most users.
[work complete, everything should be back up and running]
13 Feb 2005 – Looks like most of the problems impacting service have been fixed. Turns out that a few customer radios were also damaged by the storm and had to be swapped out. Looks like a broken radio can significantly impact everyone else on the same access point. I've done a scan to make sure everyone gets a good signal again, but there is no test better than what you experience when using the network. Please let me know if you believe your service speed is slow and I can track down the problem.
To check download speeds yourself, I suggest the following simple test. Use your browser and go to www.lucketts.net/downloads. Right click on one of the larger files in the list, select "Save Target as" or "Save Link Target as", and choose a location to copy the download to on your hard drive. If you are asked about overwriting or replacing the file, do that. Watch the download speed or transfer rate, it should average above 125KBps and may be as high as 500 KBps. If the speed occasionally drops below 125KBps, that's OK. Other users are sharing the bandwidth and sometimes the network does get busy. They may even be running the same test. But if your speed is usually or always less than 125 KBps, please let me know as that is below my standard of service.
While there are still a few nagging problems to close out, I've turned my attention back to network improvements. The new Access Point on Stumptown Road at the top of the hill is online, but performance is still shaky. Once it has a solid link to the rest of the network, it will provide service as far south as Montresor. When that access point is in place, we will be able to potentially provide service to the entire area bounded by the mountains and the river as far south as Montresor Rd. There will still be a few spots in forests and behind hills that we cannot get to, but I someone is willing to work with me I will get service to them eventually.
Last summer we offered a referral bonus for any customer that points new business our way. I've continued to honor that through the fall and winter, and a number of customers have received $50 checks in the mail for their referrals. Our application for service now has a line for the new customer to identify who referred them to us. If a current customer's name is on that line, we will send them $50 when the new customer makes their first payment. There are some rules for eligibility and lengthy legal disclaimers, so if you would like to know more, please send me an email requesting details.
New server and additional T1 bandwidth are still in work. The server is ready, but I have to transfer accounts, passwords, web space, and other stuff for each user. Since the T1 install is getting closer, I'll bring the new server up to cover that transition period from the old network to the new. The new T1's will be installed no later than 1 March (per AT&T), and we will get a new range of IP addresses. I'll have to assign new addresses to each customer and work with each of you to transition from old to new. The old server will provide Lucketts.net service to old IP addresses and the new server will be used by the users that have transitioned to the new addresses. If the new T1s are really in by 1 March, I'd like to retire the old T1 line and its IP addresses (and its bill) by 20 March. We should have at lest three weeks to do the transition. A more detailed plan is forthcoming.
31 Jan 2005 – This has been a tough week. My apologies to those that I couldn't respond to immediately. I'm still finding little problems here and there from the storm, plus a few that would have happened anyway. At least everyone is up now and running again.
The electrical snow storm last week took out a lot of equipment. The most vulnerable appears to have been the power supplies. Looks like we lost 4 of those. I've ordered additional spares to have on hand for future storms.
While working on the tower, I discovered that a bad mouse can bring down the network. Corrective action has been taken.
Current Status: All Access points are running. The tower and the test site up the hill on Stumptown Rd. have degraded performance due to power supply problems. Replacements and additional spares are on order and should be here by the weekend.
New T1s are still on track for Feb installation. The new backbone will be delayed a month while I pay for the stuff broken by the storm.
On a good note, congratulations to those that have successfully referred new customers to Lucketts.net. The bounty program worked pretty well over the slow summer, so we decided to continue it. If an existing customer refers a new customer and the new customer signs up for the high-speed service, we'll credit $50 to the existing customer account. If you prefer, we can cut you a check. On the application form the new customer can indicate who referenced them. Only one $50 bounty per new customer.
Last note: if you haven't noticed, we accept VISA and Mastercard now. You can pay the invoice online or we can setup automatic monthly billing.
23 Jan 2005 – Saturday was a tough day for the network. Significant portions of the network went down for no apparent cause between 1130 AM and 1230 PM. I was out doing installs at the time, and my first thought was of course I broke something, again. After reviewing logs and examining equipment all Saturday, I've come to the conclusion that the electrical storm that hit around noon took out parts of the network. The damage was too severe and extensive to be caused by a single problem. Widely separated pieces of equipment had hard failures, and there were soft failures on isolated subnets.
Here's the damage:
Network Center: The main switch at lucketts.net had one port completely burn out, with 2 or 3 others damaged and probably too unreliable to use again. I'm still troubleshooting it. The tower Access Point(AP) had its memory and settings wiped. I've rebuilt the AP and it appears to be running fine now.
AP2 (Brian's): The main switch at this AP had two of its five ports burn out. The remaining ports are carrying the traffic, but it will have to be replaced ASAP. The power transformers for the local receiver and the AP were both burned out and have been replaced. Brian's router also was damaged and is now unusable.
AP4 (Steve S): The AP here had its memory and settings wiped, and its radio/ethernet interface was damaged beyond repair. This AP is still offline and I'll have to order a replacement. I'll try to jury rig something to get Andy R. and Dan W. back online ASAP, but it may take a few days.
If anyone is having trouble accessing the internet, or they can get to some web sites but not others, please let me know. I need that kind of information to discover other damaged or degraded components.
Lesson learned: Long runs of cat 5 cable still need grounding and surge suppression. I have lightning suppressors (see 13 Oct news) suitable for protecting the wires running down from the antennas, but didn't think they would be needed until spring, so I put off installing them here at my place. Looks like I'll be putting them in sooner than I planned. They would not have protected the Access Points, but they would have protected the switches and power transformers.
The planned upgrade of the backbone may be delayed a month so that I can replace the damaged equipment. The new T1(s) are currently scheduled by AT&T to be installed in 3 weeks (about 14 Feb) Instead of waiting for the new T1(s), I'll try to get the new server online sooner to improve mail access and security (per request of many customers).
18 Jan 2005 – Power has been unreliable lately. It went down yesterday and the generator would not start, so we were down for about 30 minutes. When it went down the 2nd time, everything worked as is should and there was no interruption.
If your email stops working, please check your Norton Anti-virus or Firewall program. Recent updates do not play well with email. If you can get to mail through the Lucketts.net homepage, but not from Outlook or Outlook Express, then it's almost certain that your firewall has stopped the mail, even if you haven't changed anything recently.
7 Jan 2005 – You may notice a change with this month's invoices. The new software and services I've been promising have started to arrive. As of Thursday, Lucketts.net accepts VISA & Mastercard for payments. We can accept single payments or recurring payments. New accounting software was also installed so we could handle the cards. Your invoices will look different and now they are stored on a server at the bank. You can even pay your invoices by credit card online!
When you log-in to see or pay the online invoices, you should not use your lucketts.net email password. You should set up a different password. Sorry for this, I cannot set it up so a single password works on my servers and the bank's servers.
Other new stuff in the pipeline: new mail servers, domain hosting, pop3 access to your email from outside of Lucketts.net, domain hosting, and double the T1 bandwidth. Customers hosting repeaters will have access to a new data backbone running at 54 Mbps. We'll probably have to change over to new static IP addresses when the new T1's are installed. I'll try to install the new server at the same time to minimize perturbations.
25 December 2004 – The BIOS update flashed to the new main access point appears to have fixed the drop-out problem. I'll keep monitoring it, but now I can get back to work on the new primary Lucketts server. The 2nd T1 line is still in work, but AT&T wants to work with businesses that have been around longer than a year, so it may be delayed a month. We're still running about a 10% average daily load, with 10 minute peaks seldom going above 40% load (except when Tim does 2 GB of downloading).
22 December 2004 – Transformer blew and Lucketts lost power again. We stayed up on generator without dropping until about 5AM when one of the UPS died. It didn't like the generator and has been replaced. A new UPS bigger UPS arrives today that gives longer run times and handles brown-outs.
18 December 2004 – Wow... this has been a busy month. I've been troubleshooting problems left and right. One bad radio was causing problems for 10 customers, but it took a few weeks to figure it out. Actually, I didn't figure it out. I just replaced every other piece of equipment, and the only thing left was the radio. Replaced it, and the problem went away.
On 10 Dec I installed a new, more powerful radio as the main access point that most customers eventually connect through. It has much better performance than the old radio, and is reported to be much more stable. However, since it went up it has shut itself off 4 times causing inconvienence to many customers. This moring I reconfigured the network to automatically re-route by this radio if it fails again. I will monitor it, and I have two of the older radios available to replace it if I need to. That should prevent anymore of this short but annoying outages. If anyone discovers they again cannot connect to the Lucketts.net servers, please let me know ASAP.
The planned upgrade of the network backbone will still be starting in Jan, since that will help solve any future problems like we've been having.
20 November 2004 – The new server is still under construction. Features of the new machine will include long user names, robust domain hosting, secure pop3s and smtps available from anywhere on the internet and a few 100 GB of additional disk space, 1GB of RAM and a much faster CPU.
13 October 2004 – We now have lightning suppressors in stock for anyone worried about the cable coming down from their roof into their home. The suppressor is placed between the Etherant II antenna and the power/data break-out box protecting your home electronics from surges travelling down the cat 5 cable. The suppressor is available for $40 or a complete kit including grounding wire, clamp and 4ft cat 5 cable is available for $50.
21 September 2004 – I've got to watch those typos. New Access Points have been installed recently, so I'll have to update the map showing coverage. I've been out mapping signal strength for the past few weeks and it looks like we can provide service to quite a few new customers. Those that we can't reach yet, don't give up. We keep you on file and when we add new access points the file is reviewed to see if you can get a signal from it.
Lucketts.net is hosting domain names for free the rest of the year so that we can work the bugs out of the user domain maintenance software. This software lets you manage your own domain, web space and email account. You can create and delete user names without having to contact Lucketts.net. For example, you can also reach me at steve@acupfamily.com and we have a family web page at www.acupfamily.com . This service will cost extra in 2005, probably starting at $5 per month.
9 September 2004 – Price drop in storage space. Disk costs are cheap, so I've made the costs for extra disk space much less. ($1/month for each additional 100MBytes). When I install the new servers this winter, I expect the disk price will be even less. I have a new Linksys Wireless G router and laptop card set for $100 if anyone wants to set up a wireless network in their home.
5 September 2004 – The tower is now operational. For the time being, I've left transmitters running from both my home and the tower for redundancy. If one fails the other will pick up the traffic. If you notice any abnormal responses, please let me know.
The web site has been slightly modified. I've added a tools section that links to downloads, setup data, and network usage statistics. I'll put other tools there as they are installed.
The SETI@Home site is worth checking out. If you'd like a nice screen saver that also does something, go to setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu. Join the Lucketts group and add your statistics to others from lucketts.net! You can download the setiathome screensaver from the downloads section of lucketts.net.
30 August 2004 – Lucketts Fair is over! Now back to working on the network. The new tower and transmitter are now working correctly, and will provide backup to the main transmitter until I can move the network servers out of my house to the barn and Tammy can have her sun room back.
Plans for this fall include a new web/mail server to be the primary host of lucketts.net, a domain hosting capability so that customers can have personalized email addresses (such as steve@acupfamily.com), and an online backup service that will allow customers to easily backup their data to a secure location. If there are any other capabilities that would be useful, please let me know.
10 July 2004 – I thought I updated this page last week but the text didn't save properly. This week's update: the tower is up! I'll be doing signal measurements and adjusting the equipment to tweak the new access point. I will not change the primary connection for awhile, so don't worry about me breaking something and shutting off your service. <grin>
Once the signal mapping is done and the new system is stable, I'll start transitioning clients to the access point on the new tower. Some clients will not require manual adjustment, some will. I'll keep old and new access points running so we can do the transition gradually.
There was a big power interruption on Friday (always on Friday). A power pole was struck by a truck on Rt. 15 early afternoon. I was on scene helping out and as I was leaving I wondered if the power was out at home. When I arrived, the UPS were shutting down and the DNS servers went off-line. It took me about 30 minutes to adjust the power system to generator power, but we finally got back up. This fall I'll be procuring a new generator with auto-start capabilities to support the network equipment in the server room in the barn by the new tower. If anyone comes across a deal on a 15+ KVA diesel generator with autostart let me know.
Accident count: yep... one more. We were hit by a truck going northbound on Rt. 15 Thursday afternoon. I'm sore but will heal. Anna was bruised and got another ambulance ride, but she's OK. The black Blazer needs a new rear bumper. No tower climbing this week.
While the system was recovering from Friday's power outage, I took the opportunity to change the bandwidth monitor. It now measures the bandwidth going through the T1 line only. It no longer sees the data flowing from clients to the servers. The numbers it shows now will be the actual traffic through the T1. It will no longer reflect server chatter or clients accessing the servers, since that traffic is not limited by the T1.
26 June 2004 – Another week went by and I haven't broken anything, equipment or bones. <grin> I'll be trying to finish assembly of the tower sections this weekend. Saturday and Sunday around 1300 if anyone has a chance to stop by. Once assembled and radios connected, I'll need a large crew to tilt the tower up. I'll send out an announcement for help on that one.
A new status monitor has been installed that will page me automatically if any of the radios on the network go down. When the bugs are worked out, I'll be able to provide a few of the status pages off of this web site.
15 June 2004 – The tower project is moving again. About half of the tower is assembled. To raise it I'll need help from 4 or 5 people sometime this weekend, probably Sunday afternoon. If it's too windy, might have to delay to another day.
27 May 2004 – OK, I gave up on the new version of the network monitor and re-installed the old version. The graphs are prettier and it doesn't crash every 2 days. Maybe this time we can actually use the 24 hour and 30 day graphs.
22 May 2004 – I've figured out how to pull the performance charts from the network monitoring software package. The three charts below show bandwidth this hour, previous 24 hours and previous 30 days. If the network goes down or I reboot the server the charts reset. This page refreshes every minute. The last chart dropped two days worth of data due to a bug in a new version of the software. If it doesn't work right after the next reboot, I'll change it back to the old, good version.
18 May 2004 – Thunderstorm season is here. I've improved the UPS equipment so hopefully the occasional power hit will not effect us. The tower construction is going slowly: lots of rain and power tool mishaps. Hopefully I'll get the cement in next week.
