Site News: We're Back.... AGAIN !!!! The 'Story'...
Posted by: Adlon
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Ok, where do I begin. Oh, yes, the 'Story'. What happened to ENWorld, and Mortality, during the last week or so.
Well, as most of you know, ENWorld, and Mortality, are hosted by the same company, Cyberstreet. I am personal friends with the owners of Cyberstreet, and have worked closely with them for years. The ENWorld and Mortalty servers sit approx. 6-8 feet away from eachother.
Well, about 2 weeks ago, we started having problems, originating from our upstream provider. Our outbound was fine, but noone could get 'in'. Thus, you could NOT access either site, or anything else on the Cyberstreet network.
More ...
We contacted our upstream provider, and were told that they had equipment failure. Ok, so, fix it then. We were told they were, and would, and soon.
For a few short days, our stuff eventually came up, but performance was sketchy at best.
At this time, the owner of Cyberstreet (here on known as CS), began to contract for another upstream provider. A 4.5MB fiber optic pipe (THIS fiber is actually capable of up to an OC12, I believe).
So, the fiber gets run in record time. We begin our switchover after testing the fiber circuits.
Now, remember, CS is also an ISP, with ALOT of 56K, ISDN, and frame relay customers. So, web servers were NOT the only issue here. The lion's share of CS's income stems from the dial up customers. So, they had to be tended to first.
We had to begin an email campaign. New dial up system (called PRI's), revised radius system (sorry about the tech'ese, but, oh well...)
Then, the entire plug was pulled by the OLD provider, as soon as he found out we were jumping ship.
This left us in a lurch. We had only about 10% of the dial up customers switched over. Not good.
So, we started a snail mail campaign, and a telemarketing type of approach to contacting ALL of the dial up customers.
All the while, we had to change over DNS to the new network, for tons of domain names. Make a 3rd, backup DNS server, programming the new dial up system, we even had all of our traffic NAT routed through a Time Warner 1.5MB commercial cable connection for a few days.
Then, we had a plethora of problems with the new dial up system, mainly with Windows XP users, and CHAP vs. PAP password handshaking. Got that handled.
ALL during this time, ENWorld AND Mortality were never 'down', just not available to the outside world.
Then, finally, the time came, to get secondary priority servers back online. That meant ENWorld,and Mortality. I reconfigured both boxes myself. DNS changes were retro-active, so, no worries there. Assigned new Ip addresses, and a few other changes, and plugged them in.
It was THEN, that I noticed, that ENWorld came up as available quicker than Mortality. WHY? Well, I found that, due to my setting Mortality up long ago, before it was a D&D site, that I had a better, more up to date setting on the ENWorld box, pertaining to DNS updates. I never thought to check Mortality when I set up the ENWorld server.
So, when DNS went out, Mortality was a full day and a half slower than ENWorld to refresh/recache.
Obviously, I've changed THAT setting immediately.
So, things ARE returning back to normal. To the casual site visitor, things will appear 100% normal. To those of us who have a vested interest, like Morrus, and myself, these other seemingly minor details are VERY important.
There are still a few tweaks coming, which should result in NO noticeable effects to both sites. As we have 3 DNS servers now, when we move a DNS server around here and there, there are still two redundant DNS servers.
Now, lastly, onto our OLD upstream provider.
We were with them for close to two years. Occasional problems, but hey, it's the internet, right?
Following, is WHO they are, and what they've done, with links, but remember, we weren't hosting web pages with them, so we had NO clue about their web hosting issues, as you'll get to read here soon enough. We bought bandwidth from them. Period.
The FORMER provider is:
1: Hosting Network - A top level business name.
2: Feature Price - the web hosting part of their business.
3: Edison Telephone - the Bandwidth/dial tone end of the company. Edison Telephone is who we got our upstream bandwidth from.
They were a FULL FLEDGED CLEC. That means they were a full telephone company.
All 3 companies/entities were owned/operated by Travis Johnson.
RUMORS circulate that he was picked up by the FBI, though later released. The Florida State's Attorney's office is investigating heavily. And many other agencies are as well investigating.
For your reading pleasure, I now refer you to the following links.
Cyberstreet's homepage, with links to a few news stories.
http://www.cyberstreet.com
Feature Price's homepage: looks like they're still doing business, eh?
http://www.featureprice.com/
News about the sale of Feature Price:
http://thewhir.com/marketwatch/fea052203.cfm
A site dedicated to bashing (righteously so) Feature Price:
http://www.featureprice-review.com/postnuke/
THIS link will provide DAYS of reading...
http://www.yourhostsucks.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=d71a1e440fd6f7546bc40781dea57563&forumid=48
Lastly, a NON-fan site about Feature Price:
http://www.feature-price.info/
There you go. You'll know as much as I do when you've poured over all those links. You'll also be about a year older.
Feature Price was the CORE of the 3 part business, so, it's obvious that when they go under, the other 2 linked companies are done as well. Edison Telephone never got off the ground, having CS as their biggest customer.
Cyberstreet, and all affiliated, were screwed royally, and we didn't even get a kiss.
I'll soon be re-doing Cyberstreet's homepage. The plain jane one stays for about another week or so.
MANY BIG thanks to Walter and Leslie Peterson, owners/operators of Cyberstreet. A: for not having heart failure during this crisis- B: for sticking through with my dumb assed questions, C: for helping getting ENWorld and Mortality back up on their own two feet.
Those of you who would wish to thank them yourselves, I IMPLORE you to do so.
Send an email to walterp@cyberstreet.com and let them know your feelings.
Walter AND Leslie will get your emails.
So, NOW you know, ... the REST of the story...
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