12:51 pm  – After being down about 30 minutes, Comcast seems to have restored service.  The ETR on their phone system was 5:30pm today, so they may continue to go up and down for a while as the issue is being resolved.

January 10, 2011 – Due to a lack of support calls, we are going to let our staff enjoy a snow day.  We will still be offering technical support via the phone, but it will be on a call back basis for the remainder of the day.

January 10, 2011 – 9:00pm – Looks like we are going to run the same routine on Tuesday.  Technical support will be available by hitting 8.  Billing, scheduling, etc. will be available by dialing extension 126.  We expect some additional calls on Tuesday as south Alabama warms up and drys out, however many of our staff would be put in danger if they were required to get to our office.

January 11, 2011 – 2:00pm – We have opened the office for normal business. The roads look like they will be bad tomorrow, so if you want to pick up your computer, pay a bill or whatever, you may want to come by this afternoon.  Just be careful!

January 12, 2011 – Our office is open for business as  usual today.  Normal office hours apply.

10:30 am -  We have initiated repairs using both options — restore AND migration.  Some affected sites are beginning to come online as they are being moved to other servers.  The restoration is still in progress.

11:25 am – Our restoration of backups has completed and all sites seem to be back online.  We also managed to migrate many sites to a new server (this was planned for the future, but got done now) and those sites are also online.  We believe that all sites are now operating normally. If you have a site that is still having trouble, please contact support by emailing us at support@internetpro.net or calling 877-886-6868.

December 7, 2010 – 3:00am – The emergency maintenance has been performed successfully, and all services have been returned to normal.

November 24 8:50 am – It looks like some spammers have compromised one or more email accounts and are sending out mass volumes of spam through our servers.  We are actually delivering email, but it is being delayed because of the volume of email.  We are working on removing the malicious spam from our system and identifying the compromised email account(s).

Note:  No email has been lost (except the spammer’s email).  It has just been delayed a little.  As of 9:00, it looks like almost 100% of delayed email has been delivered.   There are a few ISPs who have temporarily delayed email coming from our mail server due to the spam originating from it, but those blocks should be cleared shortly.

November 24 9:08am – We have identified the email account which was being used by the spammers to relay messages.  We have changed the password on the account and blocked the spammer’s IP address.   This user made the common mistake of having the username and password be the same thing.   For example, if the email address was user@internetpro.net, the password was user.   This is something the spammers regularly try to find, so if you have an easy password on your account such as this we STRONGLY suggest you change it.  You can change it by going to our home page at http://www.netsolinc.com and clicking on “Modify Email Account Settings” or by clicking this link.

November 24 2:40pm – The spammers have apparently gathered several accounts with usernames and passwords which are the same.  We are watching the system, and as we find the spammers exploiting an account, we are changing the password for the account.  We are attempting to call the affected users, but we have not been able to reach everyone.  If you are having email trouble all of the sudden, and your password is the same as your username, then please call us at 256-547-6817 or 877-886-6868 so that we can help you reset your password.

November 25, 2010 – 9:35am – The spammers are still finding accounts with weak passwords.  We are eliminating them as we see them being exploited. We put a system in place yesterday which alerts us of unusual email volume and allows us to detect the attack more quickly.  Most users should not see any issues, however it is possible that you may see your email client get disconnected from the email server if we happen to be stopping an attack at the moment you are sending or receiving an email.   We did not mention it yesterday, but the security enhancement we put in place a couple of days ago (mentioned at the  first of this post) did NOT have anything to do with these attacks.  The security we put in place did not work with bad passwords, but it actually encrypts the email as it is sent to to other servers (if they support encryption).

After completing these steps you should be able to send and receive email via this account. If you can’t send or receive email, please call us at 256-547-6817 or 877-886-6868 for assistance.

Update 7:50 pm.  Looks like everything is back up. AT&T has still not informed us of what the problem was, but because of the Labor Day weekend they were slower than usual in their response.  We are working on adding an additional provider to add more redundancy since we cannot count on them.

Sept 4, 2010 – AT&T never did contact us about the resolution to the problem and they automatically closed their ticket.  However, this morning we are continuing to experience issues related to this problem.   As of 8:50am, most sites/services are being impacted.  We have re-opened a ticket with AT&T and are hoping they will work on this in a timely manner, but right now it does not seem like they want to work on a holiday weekend.

Update 11:25am  – Finally got some needed info from AT&T.  They have a major fiber cut between Anniston and Talladega due to construction work.   Estimated Time to Repair is 1:00pm CDT.   This issue is affecting a large area.

Update 11:31am – Well, that was quick.  They just told us 1:00, but everything just came online.

Update: We have added a button on our home page under the Online Email Center which links to the alternate interface. We hope you enjoy it.

10:20am – Our phone system is back online and we do not anticipate any additional issues.