News and Updates

Our office will be closed from 12:00pm to 2:00pm on Friday December 15, 2017 for our staff Christmas party.  Calls will be routed to voicemail during this time but will be returned immediately after the office reopens.  The front office will be closed to walk-in traffic.   We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

November 6, 2017 – 12:00pm – We are experiencing some issues with our phone system.  Calls are coming in, but communication is very rough.  We have traced the problem down to an issue between Comcast’s network and that of our SIP provider (phone provider).   The issue is about 10 hops away on the internet and is nothing happening locally.   We have made the phone provider aware of the problem and they are looking into a solution.   In the mean time, you may be better served by emailing support@internetpro.net rather than calling our office.  As always, we will continue to post updates here as we get more information.

Update 12:45pm – This issue is affecting a lot of the internet, so many sites/services are not working.   It seems to be a larger Comcast issue.

Update 2:00pm – It looks like all connectivity issues have been resolved.

October 17, 2017 – 12:30am  – Comcast is experiencing an outage at the edge of their network in the Atlanta, Ga area.  Internet traffic from Gadsden is routed through this area when going to sites outside of Comcast’s network (including visiting this site).  As a result, our websites, email, and other services are currently unavailable for Gadsden area Comcast customers.   This is a Comcast issue, and they are aware of the problem.   Currently, the estimated time to repair is 3:00am.

Update –  1:05am – The Comcast issues seems to have been resolved.  Traffic from the Gadsden area is now able to reach our network.

October 16, 2017 – A new vulnerability in the modern Wi-Fi encryption protocol WPA2 has been found.  This security vulnerability basically affects ALL Wi-Fi installations and implementations.  The issue is with the WPA2 protocol itself.   The announcement was just made this morning and some manufacturers have already release firmware updates.  However, many routers and access points will probably NOT be updated at all resulting in an unpatched vulnerability on affected networks.  This is a very serious issue and makes it almost trivial to view unencrypted data on a Wi-Fi network.  There is a published attack called KRACK which exploits this vulnerability.

Network Solutions, Inc. will be reaching out to our customers with the most sensitive data (medical offices, accounting, legal, etc.) to make sure they are informed about this issue.   Right now, the only solution for many networks is to disable Wi-Fi access completely.   This will change as more manufacturers make patches available.  If the equipment in an office is something that will remain unpatched, the only other solution will be equipment replacement.    We will NOT be contacting residential customers about this issue for logistical reasons, but will do our best to get the word our through this web page and social media.

For more information about this serious flaw in WPA2, please visit this link.  The KRACK attack is outlined on this website.

Update:  Here is a link with a list of vendors who have released a fix for this issue:   https://www.windowscentral.com/vendors-who-have-patched-krack-wpa2-wi-fi-vulnerability

If you have any questions or concerns or would like to contact us about upgrading/patching your network, please contact us at 256-547-6817 or email support@internetpro.net.

September 21, 2017 – From approx. 11:53 PM on 9/20 until 01:17 AM 9/21 we experienced an outage with an upstream fiber optic service provider. We were able to troubleshoot the issue with the provider and restore services. We will continue to work with the provider to try to correct the root cause of the outage which was a service provider router failure.

Update September 26, 2017 – Apparently, the router supplied to us by AT&T is a hunk of junk and it caused an issue again with our network.  The issue lasted from about 7:55pm to 8:20pm.   We are in the process of requesting a replacement router.

Update September 28, 2017 – AT&T believes the issue is a “known problem” with the software running on the router.  They will be performing an emergency maintenance to upgrade the firmware at 12:00 midnight tonight.   We expect minimal impact to services as the router reboots.

Update September 29, 2017 – AT&T failed to do the firmware upgrade last night. Router failed again at approximately 8:58AM and we experienced a services outage until about 9:10AM.

Update 2 September 29, 2017 – AT&T has rescheduled the update for tonight 12:00 midnight – 3:00am.  Again, this should only cause an interruption for a few minutes as the router reboots. (If they actually perform the update this time).

Update September 30, 2017 – We are 1.5 hours into the maintenance window (1:30am) and AT&T has not started the maintenance.  We have been attempting to reach their support services for 45 minutes without success but are determined to have this maintenance performed tonight.

Update 2 September 30, 2017 – It looks like this maintenance is going to be performed outside our original window because AT&T “is short staffed”.  Due to the importance of this issue, we are going to allow the work to be done outside the window and we are doing everything possible to get it done as soon as possible (2:50am).

Update 3 September 30, 2017 – 3:35am and it looks like AT&T’s incompetence may win out over our determination to fix this issue tonight. Still on hold with technical support without an answer as to why the work has not been completed.  We are going to have this work completed as soon as we are able to get engineers to complete it. Unfortunately, it looks like we are not going to be able to give a window of time or even an estimate of when that will happen.  We will post any updates we get here as we get more information.

Update 4 September 30, 2017 – 11:00am – We’ve finally gotten word that although AT&T promised updates during our windows, they had no intention of doing it because no engineers capable of performing the upgrade work until Monday.   We’ve literally been told that they can’t do a simple firmware upgrade until Monday and it is just unbelievable.

Update October 4, 2017 – 12:45pm  – AT&T has finally applied the firmware update.  They could/would not do it during a planned maintenance window and we had to allow them to do it whenever they could get to it.  This happened (without notification) at 12:21pm and the router came back online at 12:32pm.   We have been assured that this will fix the issue, and we do hope to put an end to this saga.

Update October 9, 2017 – 8:15am – The event has reoccurred.   As we initially thought, we think the router is bad.   We are again contacting AT&T about this issue.

Update October 9, 2017 – 10:45pm – We finally got our replacement router.  We will have a brief interruption while it is replaced.  Unfortunately, it is the same model as the old one.  We are hoping it is not a design flaw.

Update October 10, 2017 – 12:15am – The comedy of errors that *IS* AT&T sent a router with a bad port.  We’re back on the original router and are awaiting a new replacement.

Update October 13, 2017 – 8:35am – Router failure.   We have one being shipped to us which should arrive today.  We plan on a maintenance window tonight or tomorrow night to replace the garbage we were given by AT&T with a new Cisco and a spare to replace that one if there is an issue.

Update October 17, 2017 – 4:00pm  – We are up and running on our new router.  We were able to make the swap with only about 10 seconds of downtime (unlike AT&T).  This should now be closed.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.

September 12, 2017 – 11:30am – We are in the process of improving internet bandwidth for our datacenter. This process may result in some interrupted connections briefly while IPs migrate to a new circuit. This should be almost unnoticeable. However, if there are large downloads in process, they may be stopped. We do apologize for any inconvenience, but in minutes our service will have much more capacity.

12:00pm  – Migration is complete and tested.   Total time of interruption was about 10-15 seconds.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.

August 15, 2017 – 1:15pm – We’ve had a failure with one of our web servers which is affecting some customer sites.  We are working on the issue, but some sites are currently unavailable.   We will post updates here as soon as we have more information.   If you have any questions, please email us at support@internetpro.net.

1:43pm – Service has been restored.  We do apologize, but this outage was due to an administrative error.  I’m not going to call any names, but he’s not writing this post.  Just saying.

June 26, 2017 – We will be performing a planned maintenance of our mail system on July 5th starting at 12:00pm.  We do understand that this is outside our normal maintenance window, but due to the way the upgrade is being performed, the downtime will only be two instances of 10 minutes or less.  Due to the nature of this upgrade, we are working with a support company to insure a smooth transition and that company does have limited availability.

The maintenance we will be performing is a major update to the operating system which will allow us to improve performance and security.  Users will see improved spam detection as well.   No email will be lost during this planned maintenance, although there will be two windows of time (expected to be less than 10 minutes each) where your mailbox and webmail will be unavailable.  We expect these two windows to be about an hour apart with the first one coming around noon and the second around 1:00pm CDT.  We do apologize for this inconvenience.   We will be posting updates here as the upgrade proceeds on the 5th of July, so check back here to get the latest status updates.

Update – July 4, 2017 –  The maintenance for July 5th has been put ON HOLD due to the long uptime of our systems and due other technical issues uncovered during the preparation for the work.  We will be performing additional maintenance (filesystem check) which will require <10 minute downtime.

Update – July 4, 2017 – The filesystem check has been completed and the other technical issues have been cleared.  We *may* be able to continue as scheduled originally, but we are waiting on word from the company we are working with.

Update – July 5, 2017 11:55am – We are going to be slightly delayed on the start of the upgrade.  We will be doing the first part starting at 1:00pm instead of 12:00pm as previously scheduled.  Phase two will be approximately 1 to 1.5 hours later.  We’ll be posting announcements here.

Update – 1:45pm – The first phase of the updates is complete.  We’ll be restarting services at approximately 3:00pm at which time service will be interrupted for a few minutes.

Update – 3:00pm – The restart has started.  Services will be down for a few minutes.

Update – 3:15pm – The upgrade did not run as planned.   Services are back up and running.   We are going to be making another attempt at about 4:00pm and we will continue to post updates here.

Update – 3:30pm – After some miscommunication, it seems that we made another attempt a little early.  Services are up and running at this time and the upgrade is proceeding correctly now.  We should experience one more short interruption and expect that to happen within the next hour.

Update – 3:38pm – SMTP port 465 is down at the moment.  We do *strongly* recommend the use of port 587 with TLS encryption instead of port 465.  If your email client will support that, please change your settings.  If you need help, please contact us.   If your email client will NOT support 587, then your outgoing SMTP service will be down for the duration of the upgrade. Please use webmail at https://webmail.internetpro.net if you need to send out an email.

Update – 3:56pm – SMTP port 465 has been restored.

Update – 4:37pm – Services are going down for an expected less than 10 minute downtime.  Once they are back online, the upgrade process should be complete.

Update – 4:46pm – Services have been restored.  We do not expect any more interruptions.

Update – 4:55pm – SMTP port 465 is down again.  We are working on resolving that.  In the meantime, webmail is available at https://webmail.internetpro.net or if your email client supports  port 587 TLS encryption, please change to that.

Update – 5:13pm – SMTP on port 465 has been restored.  At this time, we believe all services are operational, but we are continuing to test.

Update – 5:30pm – The upgrade has been completed. If you see any additional issues, please contact us at the email or phone number below.

If you have any questions regarding this upgrade, please email us at support@internetpro.net or call 256-547-6817.

It has been brought to our attention that there is a issue when using the Webmail Lite interface with the latest versions of Firefox (Version 51 to current.)  The issue causes the checkboxes that are to the left of each email to not appear. This will keep users from selecting multiple emails to move or delete them. Until a patch is released to fix this issue users will need to either use Tuxedo or a different web browser for full functionality. We will update this post once the patch has been released.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this issue please email us at support@internetpro.net

Update – June 27, 2017 – This issue has been resolved with a patch to the webmail.

Thank you,

Network Solutions Support