SWNM Update

Member's Update:
The latest member's update is posted here. If you are a customer and are not receiving the update via email, please contact SWNM On-Line.

12/08/2007

Hello Everyone

If anything can go wrong, it will (Murphy's Law). That's what's been going on down here. Finally, I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We just have a few more things to resolve, and then our change should be complete. The hardest part has been the change in IP addresses. As far as we can tell, with the exception on three users, all addresses have been changed, including those for domains we host, and their mail servers. If you are a wireless customer, and not south of town, and are having problems, call us for your new addess and we will help you put it in. We will be happy to come if you need us to, just let us know. The old numbers are no longer valid.

South of town. As most of you wireless customers know, we have been experiencing problems with the Sunshine area access point. The problems started after the storm last weekend. We found several nicks in the cable and will be replacing it. The cable is in and ready, and thanks to our friend Anderson Grogan for his prep work, all we have to do is get the bucket truck scheduled. We hope this can be done early next week, or possibly even this weekend.

That same storm also caused problem for some of our mountain access points. We were able to keep everyone up by moving them around, but that has effected performance somewhat. We plan to go up on the mountain next week to find the problem.

In the mist of all this, our mail server crashed Thursday, and was down for several hours. We were able to get it back up with an older version we had on hand, but there was no filtering. Friday we get the necessary code, and downloaded the version we have been using, we then had to reinstall declude, which is our virus scanner and email spam filter. For the most part, the mail server is doing what is it support to do. We still have one problem, which we apprently still do not have resolved. This has to do with domain name servers. Legitimate ISP, including SWNM, ask for what is called a reverse lookup when sending mail. When set up correctly, the request would come back and agree with the mail server name, in our case mail.swnm.com. Right now when someone outside our network sends mail, it bouncing back because our mail server address still does not have reverse lookup. We have checked, and double checked and everything seems to be set up correctly on our end. We plan to get with Qwest, who provides our IP blocks, and get this problem resolved.

Dial up users (those who use the telephone to connect to the internet): It has been a rough road, with over twenty calls a day, and more phone calls then you can imagine, but I think we finally have everyone switched over. Special thanks to Mike and especially Roxy, who helped 28 customers in one day. That's a new record I think. For those who have not switched, here is what you need to do:

For all operating systems, your logon name MUST now be appended with "@swnm.com". For example, my user name is dave, but the logon name is now dave@swnm.com. You must use this for logon, even if you use a .net or .info email address.

On almost all windows systems, you can do this on the "Connect To" box that comes up before you hit dial or connect. The password will remain the same, however if you have problems logging on, try to retype the password first. Remember, password are case sensative, a "B" is not the same thing as a "b". But before you dial, you will see a button on the window that say "Properties". Click this button.

(NOTE if you see the properties of the shortcut, then click "find target". This will take you to the connection icon, probably labled "SWNM". Right click on this icon to bring up a pop up menu. Then left click at properties, and you will be in the same place.)

This is where there is a difference is operating systems: For Windows 98: Click on the "server types" tab. About half way down you will see a button the says "TCP/IP Setting". Click this button. Be sure that the IP address is marked to "obtain automatically" or "server assigned". Same thing for DNS or domain name servers. Right now many users have "Use the following DNS servers", and numbers typed in. We need to more that the dot to allow the DNS severs to be obtained or assigned automatically. If you do this right, the numbers below will either grey out or disapear.

Windows ME: Same thing as Win 98 except click on the "networking tab" to start.

Windows 2000, XP and Vista: In most cases, click on the networking tab. However sometimes you might find it under The general tab. We are looking for a list, normally captioned "this connection uses the following:" It will be a list with check boxes. In this list we want to find "Internet Protocol/TCP-IP". On Windows Vista, the one we want will be labled "Internet Protocol V4". Highlight, or single click on it. DO NOT UNCHECK IT! Now click the button labled "properties" just below the list. From here, the procedure is the same as windows 98. Make sure both the IP address, and the DNS addresses are "server assigned" or "obtained automatically".

With our new dialup system, we will have a national footprint, with local phone numbers you can dail when out of town without a toll charge. We will soon post these on the website, but you can preview them at www.swnm.com/gpnumbers.asp .

We also still need to complete the reconfiguration of the routers. We plan to bond two of our three T1s, which I am told should improve performance. We hope to have this done sometime next week.

If you have any problems, or need help with the change, let us know. It's been nice seeing a lot of old friends and customers during our recent flurry of house calls. We don't say it enough, but THANKS for being our customers. On behalf of all of us at SWNM On-Line, Dave, Mike and Roxy.. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Dave
SWNM On-Line

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