Drizzle System News

07/02/08-

18:00 pm: It's the 4th of July!!!

The main office will be closed in celebration of our National Holiday!!!!

07/02/08-

17:49 pm: UPDATE: **This is an Accounting notice- A note to all credit card users**

As a valued customer of Drizzle's we wanted to make you aware of a small change in our accounting system. This notice is to inform you of that change so you will be able to identify your long time friend, and service provider; Drizzle Internet Nw.

In the past, your credit card statement has read:

Drizzle Services NW

Due to switching Merchant companies; we needed to shorten up our billing name.

For future reference, your statement will now read:

Internet Services

If you have any questions regarding this change, please contact us. You can either email us at accounting@drizzle.com or by telephone at 206.447.2702

06/25/08-

12:15 pm: UPDATE: Phone System Problem

Someone got in our phone closet and rather made a mess of things. If you can not get through to our regular numbers use 877-255-4767 and you will get our Portland office. Internally the system is fine and your call can be routed where it needs to go.

03/03/08-

12:15 pm: UPDATE: Webmail Problems

Web based email is being hit pretty hard lately because of the amount of messages that are left in people's inbox. People using webmail as their email client should organize mailboxes and move messages out of the inbox to the other folders when not needed.

Having hundreds of messages in the inbox causes a great load on the server and translates to poor performance when using webmail.

01/14/08-

13:20 pm: UPDATE: Shell server access

All shell/telnet/SSH access to all servers has ended. This is unfortunate but necessary to protect the integrity of our server network.

12/04/07-

16:20 pm: UPDATE: Shell server access

The shell server is now back up after fighting some overheating problems and another hack into the system. We had to bring it back with new hardware.

Just as a reminder, the shell server will be going down permanently on 31 December 2007. An email will be going out to shell users with instructions on how to migrate email off the server.

All telnet/SSH access will stop on all servers at the same time.

12/03/07-

15:25 pm: Shell server access

The shell server is having issues due to an overheating problem in our data center. We have people working on the issue and hope to have this resolved soon.

10/22/07-

14:20 pm: Routing Issue Update

The IT folks isolated the problem and worked with our upstream provider on the routing issue. All difficulties with routing should now be resolved.

10/22/07-

12:06 pm: Routing Issue

We are currently experiencing some routing issues with one of our upstream providers. Our IT people are currently working the problem. Will post periodic updates.

10/02/07-

4:00 pm: New Web Mail Interface

Our IT people have come up with a more modern interface for web based email starting tomorrow. When you go to Web Mail you will have a choice to go into the old SquirrelMail interface or to the new NutsMail interface. We hope you enjoy it. Watch for it tomorrow.

10/02/07-

3:00 pm: New Dialup Numbers

We have a new updated list of phone numbers for dialup access on our nationwide dialup network. Check out the access page and click on the map.

09/14/07-

2:00 pm: Termination of Shell Services

This has been confusing for many people so we would like to explain this a bit better.

The shell server along with shell access (telnet/ssh) is being terminated. The email will be transferred to our regular mail server and most people will only need to change the incoming mail server from shell.drizzle.com to pop.drizzle.com.

The shell access is being terminated because of too many compromised accounts. Hackers do attacks on a username until they break the password. They then install 'root kits' or other malicious tools that compromise the system. We had such a compromise two days ago.

The termination will be on 31 December 2007.

09/07/07-

5:24 pm: Limited Network Outage

One of the switches in our routing between our three data centers experienced a minor glitch that caused intermittent access problems for web and email. The IT staff was able to quikly identify the problem switch and correct the error. The approximate outage time was 32 minutes.

08/22/07-

12:24 pm:DRIZZLE MAINTENANCE NOTIFICATION

Maintenance Window: 11:31pm PDT to 12:00am PDT

Duration of maintenance: 5 min

Description:

Drizzle Internet Services will be doing routine maintenance in our Seattle Data Center. Maintenance will be preformed during a regular maintenance window on August 23, 2007 between 11:31pm PDT to 12:00am PDT. During this maintenance customers may experience a 5 minute downtime for DSL services. Customers who are experiencing connectivity issues after the planned maintenance window are requested to reboot their DSL modems before contacting technical support. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please call with any questions or concerns.

Impact: DSL services for most Northern Washington customers

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the Drizzle Support Department

08/01/07-

12:00 pm:DRIZZLE MAINTENANCE NOTIFICATION

Type of maintenance: DS3 to OC3 ATM network upgrade Estimated Downtime: Five minutes per individual DSL circuit.

Description:

Drizzle will be performing an internal network capacity upgrade on August 7, 2007 in our Seattle Data Center. Due to the nature of this type of upgrade Drizzle customers will be migrated gradually over a period of about two weeks to a new higher capacity DSL circuit. When your modem is migrated to the new circuit you will lose internet connectivity for approximately 5 minutes. If for any reason your modem does not automatically come back online please uplug the power cable from the DSL modem and plug it back in. Please wait five minutes to allow the modem to complete coming back online before calling our office. Again due to the nature of this type of upgrade we cannot tell you exactly what time your modem will be migrated. We appreciate your patience during this upgrade. Do not hesitate to call or email us if you have any questions or concerns.

Impact: Internet services for Qwest DSL and ATM circuits

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the Drizzle Support Department

07/24/07-

10:52 am: The mail server migration/upgrade has been completed and things should be working properly. Many of you may notice a sharp decrease in spam as well. Please let support know if you are experiencing any problems.

07/16/07-

11:07 am: We are currently doing some pre-configuration work on our email server in preparation to move to a new server. The current server is old and needs to be retired. Over the week end some of folders temporarily disappeared and some email was duplicated during our pre-configuration work. We hope to have the migration completed in the next couple of weeks and this should be invisible to most users. We will keep you informed of changes as they happen.

04/27/07-

1:35 pm: If you plan on getting Netscape 8 please read this.
Netscape 8.1.3 provides some security fixes. Please Note: Netscape 8 does not contain an e-mail client, and it is not considered that this is a direct replacement for Netscape 7.x. Users wishing to upgrade to Netscape 8.0 are recommended to either try Mozilla Thunderbird (a standalone e-mail client) or get Mozilla Suite 1.7.x or get SeaMonkey, or simply keep your copy of Netscape 7.x for email purposes.

04/20/07-

10:00 Email server upgrade! Be expecting an email soon from Drizzle about our email server upgrade. This should be happening sometime next week in the middle of the night. During that time there will be a half hour to an hour where email access will not be available. You will be getting the full details on our upcoming email, watch for it.

03/22/07-

09:10: We have a problem on a router interface that connects to XO Communications in Seattle. We have rerouted all traffic to go out of our Salt Lake City data center while XO works on the problem. There should be no service disruption while this is being worked on. Some people may have experienced some packet loss earlier but it should be corrected now.

03/18/07-

08:00: Yesterday the hardware failure happened again at 10:00 and was restored by 10:30. We had planned to replace the hardware next weekend and give everyone notice but opted to replace it late last night. Everything went well with the change out and we believe this will resolve the DSL outages in the western Washington area.

03/12/07-

07:47: We had a hardware failure this morning and had to do a manual reboot. The connection was restored at 07:47 this morning. We will be replacing this hardware in the very near future.

03/08/07-

14:36: We have upgraded our secure certificate for web based email and decided to call it webmail instead of drizzlemail. Any bookmarks you have should be changed to https://webmail.drizzle.com/. If you use the shell server make it https://webmail.drizzle.com/shell. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

10/17/06-

14:45: Cascadia (the shell server) just wigged on us. We restarted it and it's working normally now. We apologize for any delays you may have had

10/05/06-

10:05 am: And spam assassin is working again. Thanks for your patience.
10:00 am: The spam assassin server is going to be off line for a few minutes while it updates.

09/21/06-

10:10 am: We think that we got it all and e-mail should be working correctly again.

10:00 am: SMTP server is slow to respond as we are currently getting spam bombed. We are hoping this will be taken care of quickly (as our system admin is working on it now).

09/13/06-

4:22 pm: As a reminder to the e-mail we sent out:
Drizzle Internet will be doing routine maintenance in our Seattle Data Center. Maintenance will be preformed during a regular maintenance window on September 13, 2006 between 9:01pm PDT to 11:00pm PDT. During this maintenance customers may experience a 1-2 hour downtime for DSL services. Customers who are experiencing connectivity issues after the planned maintenance window are requested to reboot their DSL modems before contacting techinical support. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause

Impact: Email, Dialup, & DSL services for all NW Washington customers

3:58 pm: There was a problem with our upstream provider that prevented customers from connecting. This has been resolved. Sorry about that!

09/01/06-

1:20pm: We're closing early to celebrate the Labor Day weekend. We'll be closing today at 2 pm and we'll be back on Tuesday 9/5. Everyone be safe and sane!

08/28/06-

8:35 am: We were mailbombed on Saturday and it played havok with our mail servers on Sunday. If you noticed any connection slowness or problems with e-mail this weekend, they have been resolved. Sorry about that!

08/22/06-

8:20 am: I am informed dial up issues were finally resolved last night at 7:30 pm.

08/21/06-

3:43 pm: There is currently a problem with dial up customers not being able to connect. We are working on this and should have it resolved shortly.

and yes, I'm aware of the irony of posting this to an on-line site when most dial up users can't get on line.

08/16/06-

10:40 am: ok we're back.
9:30 am: The VoIP provider we have is down, so you can't call us right now. Please hang tight. If you have an issue that can be resolved by e-mail please e-mail info@drizzle.com (for tech support questions) or accounting@drizzle.com (for billing issues). Thanks!

08/10/06-

4:30 pm: Small glitch with cascadia, it's fixed now, but if you couldn't make a dial up connection that was why.

07/28/06-

8:34 am: Outgoing mailserver was down for a bit this morning, but it should be working again. If your not able to send e-mail, please be patient, we'll have the server running again soon.

07/26/06-

12:30pm: Passwords have been changed now. If you've already called us to get your password over the phone your password was not changed again. However, if you didn't call us to get your password, it has been changed.

10:30 am: Passwords have been changed for about 100 customers. We've noticed that someone's account has been compromised and spam is being sent from cascadia. We've narrowed the list of suspects down to 100 customers, and those 100 customers' passwords have been changed. If you find that you can no longer connect to Drizzle via dial up or you're unable to check your e-mail, please call us (206-447-2702 or 1-800-378-7405) and we'll be happy to give you a new secure password.

I do apologize for the draconic measure here, but we must stop whom ever is sending spam over our network, and this is the only other way to stop the spammer without locking everyone out of making telnet connections.

07/17/06-

9:07 am: The server which runs SapmAssassin konked out for a bit between 2 am and 5 am this morning, making SpamAssassin not work. We are working on the server, but SpamAssassin has been restarted and is again checking e-mail.

07/17/06-

10:16 am: There was an outage with Cascadia (the authentication server) this morning which effected both e-mail, dial up, and telnet connections to Drizzle. We have fixed this and you should be able to connect again.

06/29/06-

11:00 am: ok fixed now. FTP is working correctly again on Orca.

10:50 am: FTP server isn't working with windows now. We are working on this.
10:40 am: new FTP server is running on Orca, please let us know if there are any problems.

10:30 am: FTP access for orca (where most websites are hosted) will be turned off for about 10 minutes while we install new FTP software.

06/28/06-

4:00 pm: Just so that you all know there is an on going issue where Juno and Netzero have been blocking our e-mails. We have been trying to contact Juno to rectify this, but they have been less than responsive. At this time, we are suggesting that if you have Juno contacts with other e-mail addresses they check to use a non-Juno e-mail address for communication.

05/12/06-

9:02 am: Just as a reminder, we're closed on May 29th for Memorial Day.

05/12/06-

8:39 am: SpamAssassin hung again last night, so messages were not checked. If you've seen a spam increase this is why. Again, we are sorry about this and are trying to figure out why SpamAssassin stopped.

05/12/06-

11:57 am: Minor billing update, I'm sure you all got this, but I'm putting it here just in case:

To our valued Drizzle customers,

As our company continues to strive to provide the most complete service possible, we find it necessary to upgrade our billing package. This upgrade will provide our customers the most state of the art web-based billing interfaces available. In doing so, we are able to offer some exciting new features to your current Drizzle account without any extra cost to you, the user. Starting June 1, 2006, you will now be able to access and update your account information 24/7 by simply going to our website and logging in to your account. Some of the exciting features of this new billing system include the ability to add new services, update credit card number and address info, as well as create tech support tickets for online troubleshooting.

Upgraded spam filters are included at no extra charge. You will be able to filter email traffic at different levels as the system allows, and you can adjust it yourself at anytime by simply logging into your account.

All our monthly customers will now be charged on the first day of the month, so those customers whose billing dates fall after the 1st will be prorated accordingly. Annually billed customers' expiration dates will not be affected by this process.

As we are upgrading our billing processes to more efficiently service you, we want to assure you that our Technical Support and Accounting staffs remain committed to providing exceptional local service here in the Northwest.

If you have questions or concerns about how this change will affect your account, please feel free to contact us at 206-447-2702, or write to accounting@drizzle.com


Sincerely,

Jon Newell
President and CEO
Drizzle Internet NW

05/08/06-

9:55 am: SpamAssassin for some reason hung up this weekend. All your e-mail was correctly delivered, but none of the e-mails where checked. SpamAssassin has been restarted and should be working correctly now.

04/28/06 -

10:30 am: As you've noticed spam to Drizzle customers has been on the increase. You're tired of it, we're tired of it, and our system is tired of it. Because of this spam increase, we activated a new product to help us and you deal with spam. From today on, messages that our system thinks are spam will be moved to a spam folder so you won't even see them anymore unless you want to. From today on, you have the ability to add e-mail addresses to your white list or to create personalized black lists. You also have the ability to change your e-mail password online without calling for support. To see any of these options, you should log into Drizzlemail.

First things first, the option I'm happiest with, is the new Spam List Manager. The Spam List Manager will allow you to custom make white lists, black lists and change the ranking on your e-mails that are marked as spam (blocking more being a more aggressive spam blocking option than blocking less). E-mails that are marked as spam will be moved to a spam folder; the messages in this folder will be automatically deleted by our system when they are 10 days old (unless you delete the messages in there before hand). We hope that this will dramatically reduce the amount of spam messages from reaching our customers.

Secondly we've added a new module to Drizzlemail that allows you to change your password on line. Please note that this change will ONLY effect your e-mail, it will not allow you to change your Drizzle dial up, telnet, or FTP password. You will still need your current password to initially log in to change your e-mail password, however, once you've logged into Drizzlemail, you are free to change your e-mail password to anything you want. You can do this through the options link in Drizzlemail.

We do hope that these changes help your experience with Drizzle!

04/27/06 -

12:27 pm: We are switching to a new faster news server. There has been a known bug with the new service that we've been working with them on. The bug is old messages in groups aren't available, but still get listed. If you try to read old messages with TIN or TRN, you will not be able to read the articles on top (as both of these programs list old articles first). If you are using a graphical news reading program this should be me much of an issue as you can switch the display to show older messages at the bottom. However, until the news service fixes this bug, older messages in TRN and TIN will not display.
Again, as may happen anytime there's a newsserver change, you may have to throw out your old .newsrc file and reload it (on TRN and TIN), or if you aren't using TRN and TIN you may have to tell your newsreader to get the groups again.

04/25/06 -

4:04 pm: Extra messages are gone and the server should be working correctly again.

3:59 pm: there is a problem right now with the outgoing mail server. We're getting attacked by some spammer who's IP resolves to Korea. Unfortunately, this has knocked our outgoing mail server out while we work on this.

04/11/06 -

10:50 am: DNS has been moved.

8:33 am: There was a DNS problem last night, and DNS will be moving to a new machine at about 9:30 am. This will be a live change and there will be about a 5 minute downtime for DNS while it's moved.

04/04/06 -

8:45 am: Mail server is fixed. Restart your mail programs and you should be able to get e-mail again

8:24 am: Sorry I couldn't update this sooner but the phones are off the hook. There is a problem with our mailserver right now. We are aware of this and are wking on it. At this time we do not have an ETA.

04/03/06 -

9:29: and webmail is working correctly.

9:18 am: There is a problem with Webmail right now. If you try and log onto webmail (and you use the shell) you will get an error "Preference database error (connect failed). Exiting abnormally". We are working on this and it should be fixed shortly.

03/27/06 -

8:52 am: Newsgroups have been changed to a different provider. One with more ports and more groups. The upside, you should see better speed for your newsgroups. The downside, you may have to subscribe to your groups again.

03/23/06 -

12:07 pm: Tonight at around 10 pm, we are upgrading sendmail on all our machines. We expect about a 5 minute outage while this happens. Just a heads up!

03/22/06 -

9:40 am: Tomorrow night at 9:30, we're switching our AS number with our providers. This could cause some packet loss and latency. We expect this to take about 2 hours (between 9:30 and 11:30). Just a heads up!

03/10/06 -

8:38 am: Last night we had a minor problem with our upstream provider for DNS last night, and most DSL was down for about 30 minutes. Once they realized this error and fixed the servers service was restored. We apologize for any problems this may have caused.

This morning all services are working correctly. Everyone have a great Friday!

03/02/06 -

10:58 am: ok mailing lists appear to be working again.

10:43 am: It appears our system admin did something on the mail server that mailing lists run from and it has temporarily removed the ability for mailing lists to send. We are aware of this problem and should have it fixed shortly.

03/01/06 -
12:26 pm: Sorry there were problems with the outgoing SMTP server this morning. We didn't post about this earlier as Bill was the only one in the office (as I was off getting a tooth pulled at the dentists). If you're still having problems sending e-mail, please re-enter your password and you should be able to send again. If you've tried that and are still having issues, please give us a call and we'll gladly assist you.

Again, our office hours are Monday through Friday from 8 am to 6 pm, and our phone number is 206-447-2702.

02/13/06 -
8:56 am: We're closing an hour early today for phone maintenance. So today we're closing at 5 pm. Also, just so that you guys all know, we were not hacked this weekend, and no ones website was replaced with Islamic warnings.

02/09/06 -
8:44 am: Friday Happy Dance day! Webmail is working correctly again. Seems like everything is going ok right now.

02/09/06 -
4:58 pm: Now webmail (and only webmail) isn't working. We are working on this and it should hopefully be fixed shortly. We do not have an ETA as to when this will be fixed, but if you use a mail program (like Outlook Express or MacMail) you can still download messages.

11:30: It appears that the attack is over and we're working ok. There may still be a few issues that we're not seeing, but at this time, our system appears to be ok.

9:20 am: It appears that we are under a hacker attack (or so it appears). We're getting packet loss and are working on this to get it resolved. This may prevent you from making updates or may cause some momentary problems if you are trying to work with something on Drizzle's servers.

01/26/06 -
10:30 am: Ok Cascadia is back and everything should be working as normal.
8:33 am: Cascadia is currently having issues. The server was still running but not taking any connections. We are rebooting it as we speak. Please note that this will effect your e-mail, dial up, and FTP access until this is running again. Thanks for understanding!

01/24/06 -
9:01 am: Just a few quick notes to be aware of. First off, there is a new worm on the net (nyxem, a.k.a. Kama sutra worm). This worm uses a ver dated technique to entice you to download it by looking like a pornography link. The subject may contain text that may say "Miss Lebanon 2006" or "School girl fantasies gone bad". Simply delete these messages without opening them or downloading anything from them will protect your computer. You can learn more about this virus here.

Next, as I'm sure some of you have noticed we're getting added to a lot of blacklists recently. There's a few different issues here and I'm going to try and cover the major ones. First off, if you are forwarding your e-mail to an AOL account, please make sure that you include the correct headers if you report it as spam. Currently AOL is just looking at the new headers and not seeing the old headers of the spam messages, so they are blocking Drizzle as being spammers.

Next up the SpamCop blacklisting is due to the folks at SpamHaus and SpamCop looking at legitimate error messages (error: no such user here messages) and saying that these messages are spam messages. We are working on getting them to notice that these messages are NOT spam messages and are in fact error messages from someone flooding our server trying to find good e-mail addresses.

Anyhow, this should address quite a few issues we've been getting calls and e-mail messages on. Thanks for reading and I hope that you're enjoying the weather today! -- Doug, Drizzle CS Manager.

01/05/06 -
4:30 PM: Tonight Drizzlemail (and webmail.drizzle.com/shell) will be taken off line at 11 PM tonight for about 30 minutes while our system admin does some minor tweaks to them. They should be up and running again before Midnight (Pacific time).

01/04/06 -
08:35 am: Yes there was a problem with cascadia this morning, but as of about 8 am it's working again. This effected both dial up and website access.

01/02/06 -
11:40 am: DNS is a little slow right now. We're being mail bombed, and this is causing some delays.

12/30/05 -
11:09 am: Happy New Years to us! We're on reduced hours today and Monday the 2nd. We'll be in the office from 9 to 1 on both days. Be safe everyone and have a very Happy New Years!

12/21/05 -
11:06 am: Tomorrow (December 23rd) and Monday (December 26th) we'll only be working from 9 am to 1 pm. We're taking some half days to celebrate the various Winter Holidays! Peace on Earth, good will to all people!

Also, someone pointed out that this is buried now, so I'll bring it back up here. If you're using PINE to check your e-mail and you're not seeing any new messages, please make sure that you inbox-path is correct. The inbox-path on PINE needs to be {imap.drizzle.com}INBOX, unless you've been told that your mail is going to shell.drizzle.com instead of pop.drizzle.com.
To change your inbox-path use the S command to access the set up options, then select the C option. One of the first options you will find is the inbox-path. Here is where you will need to update your inbox-path to be {imap.drizzle.com}INBOX (exactly as it is typed, with the squiggly brackets and capitalization). Once you have made this change, you will need to enter your username and password twice. Please note that you will also see something about an insecure connection; you can ignore that at this time.

Again, everyone have a safe holiday season. We'd hate to hear that anything bad happened to you!

12/19/05 -
10:58 am: SpamAssassin stopped marking messages this weekend. It was still checking them, but for some reason it didn't change the subject title to SPAM. Our system admin has fixed this and SpamAssassin should be working again.

12/15/05 -
11:11 am: HOPEFULLY (and I want to emphasize the HOPEFULLY part of that last word) we've stopped that DoS. China is not being nice to us.

11:05 am: We're getting SLAMMED on port 25 right now (it's a Denial of service attack again) and it's causing our servers to run slowly. We are working on fixing this and restoring access.

12/14/05 -
11:47: webmail and shell webmail are working again.
11:35 am: System admin was working to speed up mail servers and unfortunately borked the link to webmail. We are working on this and should have it returned shortly.

12/08/05 -
2:40 pm: And it's done. If you're still having errors with SquirrelMail, please contact us.

2:38 pm: We are installing a new version of SquirrelMail. Right now you may get errors when you try and log into webmail. JUst wait a few minutes and try again.

12/07/05 -
11:48 am: Yesterday we were subjected to a denial of service attack. This caused massive slowness on our webservers yesterday. We are still researching how this was accomplished and are hoping to avoid issues like this again. If you were unable to connect to your website yesterday, this is why...

12/06/05 -
9:07 am: If you are using MacSSH, please make sure that you uncheck the Secure Shell v2 option. If you do this, you can then use MacSSH to connect.

8:48 am: As you may know, we had a mail delay yesterday. We are currently grilling our system admin to find out why this happened.

Also, if you're using MacSSH on OS9 or lower, you currently won't be able to make an SSH connection. There was a security hole in SSH that we had to address. Unfortunately the security hole lies in the same place that the MacSSH uses to connect. We have patched the security hole, and that has blocked MacSSH from connecting. We are researching alternative programs to use and will post with more information as soon as we have it. Please note that this only effects OS 9 and lower MacSSH (as the OS X Terminal program works correctly). Again, I do apologize for any problems this may cause.

11/25/05 -
11:24 am: Sorry, I should have reported this earlier, but the webservers were hacked at around 5:30 or so on Wednesday the 23rd. When the hacker was booted he maliciously removed ALL home files. We restored all websites from an earlier back up, but any changes that you made on Wednesday the 23rd have been lost, and you'll need to make the updates again. Sorry about that!
Also remember we're only open until 1 pm today.

10/21/05 -
4:10 pm: Sorry, didn't post before this, but all our servers are working. Please note, if you're using PINE and not seeing your mail, please make sure that your inbox_path is pointing to: {imap.drizzle.com}INBOX. To do this, in PINE, use the S command to access the set up options, then hit the C key. One of the options you'll see will be inbox_path. Here's where you'd need to add {imap.drizzle.com}INBOX .

Also if you use IMAP only to access your e-mail, please call or e-mail us and change your incoming mail server to shell.drizzle.com. Please note that you may need to subscribe to some of your folders again, but you'll have access to your old messages and folders again.

10/21/05 -
4:28 pm: ok fine, I was wrong, we're working. If you're still not seeing your archived mail folders in Drizzle or on an IMAP connection, you may need to resubscribe to them. In Drizzlemail you can do this by selecting Folders and selecting subscribe to the folders you need.

3:44 pm: Final post of the day, unless it isn't...

To All Drizzle Customers;

As President of Drizzle Internet Services I wanted to express my deepest regrets for the condition of the networks reliability in the last several months.

Since our mergers with IPNS Inc. in January 2005 we have put in process a plan to replace the older servers, some of them pre-2000, with newer ones, then replace the new ones with IBM blade servers. This will bring our small locally owned network into world-class status. Our connections to Portland and Salt Lake will allow us to support our Northwest Customers through the region built on our own backbone. We will do this with internal cash flow in order to be here for the long-term, and our aim is to do this as seamlessly and painless as possible.

Reliability, speed and service enhancements will allow us to compete and provide local services, provided by local residents to our customer base in Seattle, Portland and Salt Lake City. We do not desire to be the biggest; we intend to be the best, provided locally!

We in the Drizzle/IPNS family of employees are committed to learn from our experiences and want to hear how we can best serve you in the future? What services are important to you here locally?

I would like to encourage all our customers to help us help you with improved services. I have asked that all info@drizzle.net emails be forwarded to me for review.

We hope to earn your continued support and patronage.

Regards,

Jon Newell President and CEO

2:38 pm: Sorry! I forgot to add a few lines. If you can't get your pine mail, please make sure that your inbox_path is pointing to: {imap.drizzle.com}INBOX.

10/20/05 -

3:55 pm: The mail servers are synched up! Now all the servers need to do is slog through the GIANT amount of messages on the server. As soon as this is done, we are anticipating not seeing slowness like we've had over the past few months again!

2:40 pm: Mail is still being processed. Sorry folks, it's just slow, we're hoping it'll clear up soon

11:20 am: There is still a mail delay. We are HOPING it'll clear itself up today.

10/19/05 -
5:29 pm: If you can not reach your e-mail, PLEASE read the following:

If you are using external email client and have no custom procmail script there will be no changes to your account. This is for customer whom are simply downloading messages using Eudora, Outlook Express, or another e-mail client and not running SpamAssassin.

If you are using external email client and have custom procmail script, please contact us and use shell.drizzle.com for incoming mail server. This would be applicable if you are using Eudora (or any other e-mail program that downloads messages to your sever) and running SpamAssassin or using procmail to route your messages to specific folders.

If you are using local email client and have no custom procmail scripts use imap.drizzle.com in pine/elm/mutt. This would be used if you are just using Pine/Elm/Mutt on the shell and aren't running SpamAssassin.

Finally, if you are using local email client and have custom procmail scripts, please contact us and use same settings as before. This would be if you were using Pine and were running SpamAssassin or using procmail to route messages to specified folders.

11:00 am: if you've lost your old e-mail, you can find it at http://webmail.drizzle.com/shell (and log in using your Drizzle password and username).

The mail server is working correctly, but the upgrade that we did last night split the server for now. We are working on moving your older e-mails to the new server, but nothing is lost.

10/18/05 -
12:30 pm: Due to equipment issues we missed the maintenance window. We will be doing the maintenance tonight instead. I am sorry about this. To prevent the problems that we are specifically trying to fix (slow e-mail) we are not sending out a mass e-mail. Again, I do apologize for this.

10/14/05 -
2:53 pm: we have nothing to report except we sent a mass mailing about scheduled outages for next Tuesday. Have a great weekend!

10/11/05 -
12:07 pm: And we're back. It was only down for about 3 minutes. So Drizzlemail should be working per normal now. Thanks!
11:34 am: Ok I was wrong, cascadia (the mail server that we've been having issues with over the past few months) is going to be rebooted at noon. This should correct the issue that some customers are having with slow loading Drizzlemail. The server should only be unavailable for about 10 minutes.

9:12 am: All system are go. All the e-mail that was deferred yesterday should have been delivered.

10/10/05 -
2:44 pm: Mail may have been delayed this morning while the servers were down. None was lost but it'll arrive later in the day.

10:18 am: Mail server is being rebooted and should be up shortly. Again, sorry about any problems this may cause


9:23 am: There is a problem with the IMAP servers, as well as with the other servers connected with Cascadia (mail and pine). We are working on fixing this, and it should be taken care of shortly. We are VERY sorry about this, and our system admin is working on this as we speak.

10/07/05 - 9:50 am: This is a notice that Drizzle Internet has scheduled a maintenance period for our network beginning at 3:00 am, Sunday, October 9, 2005.

During this time, shell, mail, and news access will be turned off. Mail will still arrive as normally during this time, however, you will not be able to down load messages during this maintenance window. The purpose of the maintenance is to improve our mail servers. In addition you may not be able to make changes to your web site.

We anticipate the maintenance period to last approximately one hour. During this period, all Drizzle services will be unavailable for at least some portion of the time.

This maintenance window is to make server changes in preparation to an upgrade to our mail system. We may have a second window next week to complete these changes. If so we will send further information next week regarding these changes.

Thank you very much for your patience as we work to update our networking equipment.

10/06/05 - 12:08: Everything is going fine. We haven't had issues since that very brief outage on Monday. And this is how it should stay.

10/03/05 - 12:57 pm: sorry one file was missing fixed it and you can NOW get your e-mail. Sorry about that. 12:38 pm we're back up. See, only a few minutes of downtime. Important news: we're going to be doing a reboot of Cascadia at 12:30. This should be a quick reboot, but this will effect e-mail. Please be warned.

10/02/05 - 8:14: Cascadia was down for about 30 minutes earlier today (like at around 5, I just forgot to post about it). It should be working normally.

9/30/05 - New News 8:35 am: New e-mail is being delivered like it should. The older e-mail from is being delivered as well, but it will take the servers time to process it all. We are HOPING that the old e-mail will be cleared out today and delivered.

9/29/05 - NEW 2:28 pm: The Servers are BACK! The mail that was queued up while the servers were down will be delivered over the next few hours as they are processed by the server. Thanks so much, and hopefully this will make the mail delivery back to how it use to be.

NEW (11:56 am)Servers are still down, however, they should be restored later today. I am very sorry about this problem. Ignore the old posts about how to help with the server slowness as this new server WILL take care of this issue.

9/29/05 - NEW (11:41 am): The server that authenticates dial up and e-mail is DOWN right now. All of the information is being moved to a new server and we should be up shortly. I am so very sorry for any problems this may cause. Mail is still running slow. Still our system admin's highest priority. Still no ETA. Again, these slowdowns are partially caused by people using their e-mail server space as long term storage and the load can not decrease while people with large mail spools are checking their messages. It is better to keep your mail spool and server space at or under 10 MB, or reduce how frequently you check your e-mail to less than once per hour, as this will lighten the load on our mail server.

9/28/05 - We are still seeing mail delays. This is our system admin's highest priority to fix, however, we do not have an ETA as to when it will be resolved. As we said on the 26th, these slowdowns are partially caused by people using their e-mail server space as long term storage and the load can not decrease while people with large mail spools are checking their messages. It is better to keep your mail spool and server space at or under 10 MB, or reduce how frequently you check your e-mail to less than once per hour, as this will lighten the load on our mail server by a considerable amount.

9/27/05 - We are still working on the mail delays. Please note that none of your e-mail is lost, it's just delaying in being sent. Will post more as I have more info to post.

9/26/05 - UPDATE!: The mail servers maybe running slow or refusing to accept e-mail to send (it's timing out). Please wait and try your message again later if you get this message, as we'll be working on the mail server all night. We understand that this maybe frustrating. These slowdowns are partially caused by people using their e-mail server space as long term storage and the load can not decrease while people with large mail spools are checking their messages. It is better to keep your mail spool and server space at or under 10 MB, or reduce how frequently you check your e-mail to less than once per hour, as this will lighten the load on our mail server by a considerable amount. Thanks for understanding!

9/20/05 - It appears that the mail servers have been running slow again. We are again working on this.

9/14/05 - The Terms of Services have been updated. No real changes, but it does bring them on line with IPNS' policies. Also our billing has been updated so you can now do on-line payments.

9/12/05 - Have a good weekend? We're sorry to report that one of our webservers was hacked. We found out on Saturday and restored the pages on that server from a back up. If you updated your website on Friday, please make sure that any changes you've done to your site are still there. Please note that at this time it appears access was gained via a bad PHP script. Please audit your php scripts if you're hosting a domain with us and make sure that your php scripts are secure. Thanks!

9/8/05 - IMPORTANT!: Orca (the webserver where most personal pages are) went down for about and hour and a half. We rebooted and it appears that all is well. However, if you made changes to your webpages today, PLEASE check your pages to make sure that they are still showing the correct changes. We do apologize for any problems this may have caused.

9/7/05 - One webserver (Orca) was down this morning, but after a reboot it's working again. Just a heads up.

9/2/05 - Tis I your little humble Drizzle support tech saying that things should be running normally. Remember we're closed on Monday for Labor day.

9/1/05 - UPDATE Fixed. Rebooted the server so some of you may have lost connections to cascadia, so you'll have to establish them again, but you should see Drizzlemail working again as usual. Thanks for your understanding. Mail server is running SLOOOWLY for IMAP connections. Our sysadmin is on it, and this problem will be resolved soon. We will be rebooting the server which may result in lost connections for a few minutes. Just hang tight, it'll be working again.

8/29/05 - We can't think of anything to add. Things appear to be running ok right now. Just a handy FYI.

8/24/05 - We are aware that there are some delays in delivering e-mails. The mail server has a bit of a back log and is working to clear this out. It will be resolved shortly.

8/19/05 - There were issues with the Mail server this morning, however they have been repaired. E-mail sent from pine this morning between 2 am and 9:30 was delayed, and all e-mail was delivered between 9:30 and 10:00. We have fixed this, and there shouldn't be any other issues as this time. Have a great weekend!

8/12/05 - Mailing lists are running a little slow today. We're working on them right now, and will post more when we have more.

8/11/05 - E-mail Update: We have fixed the mail servers. Mailing lists and mail sent from Pine with a large number of recipients may still be running a little laggy, and will be cleared up as the queue of mail is sent. Thanks again for your understanding!

8/11/05 - We think that we have FINALLY isolated the problem with our mailservers that wasn't allowing customers to send to groups of e-mail recipients. We think that this is now fixed. If you are still having issues, PLEASE e-mail or call us. Thanks!

8/5/05 - All Drizzle customers should be aware that Drizzle's mail servers have been hammered by spam and have been running slow. We do apologize for this inconvenience and are working to restore speedy e-mail service.

3/3/04 - All Drizzle Email users should be aware of a new, fast-spreading email virus known as Beagle-K. This virus takes the form of an email with an attachment and appears to come from the recipient's ISP. In your case, drizzle.com.