Please note that the text of this page was last updated on 14 October 1996; the contents of this page is being preserved as-is for posterity. The only changes made since that time were (a) to update the page markup to current XHTML standards, and (b) to obscure email addresses located throughout these pages (except for USENET postings). Needless to say, many of the links to external sites are no longer functional after 13+ years.

Path: visi.com!winternet.com!tomkat
From: tomkat@winternet.com (TomKat)
Newsgroups: winternet.announce
Subject: Winternet Update 7/11 (AM)
Date: 11 Jul 1996 07:34:11 GMT
Organization: StarNet Communications, Inc
Lines: 105
Approved: tomkat@winternet.com
Distribution: local
Message-ID: <4s2apj$nl@blackice.winternet.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: subzero.winternet.com
Summary: One thing at a time...
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

Okay, Several points of interest today.

Firstly,  there should be a mass mailing in your mailbox by morning 
containing an update from the Board of Directors conserning Mike Horwath
which is also repeated at the bottom of this post.  Don't panic if you 
don't get this mail right away, the mail server is heavly loaded down and 
we expect it to free up soon.

Secondly, some of you noted a problem with the NFS server today.  This was 
caused by a run away process that started to eat up all the avilable 
processess.  To this end, the processes have been killed off and the 
script that was generating them has been temporarily disabled till we can 
assure the process not running away again.

If you are still experiancing any problems, please let us know either by 
calling, or by emailing problems@winternet.com.

Thank you again for your understanding,
Thomas.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
TomKat@winternet.com   ftp://ftp.winternet.com/users/tomkat/    m=e/c^2
IRC: KittKat # mailing list: ch-pound@winternet.com  Infinite Diversity
Anything good is obvious    Thomas S. Keeley    in Infinite Combination
-----------------------------------------------------------------------



Dear Winternet users,

We have been asked for an update about what is happening with
Winternet.  Winternet is up and running.  There are a couple of
technical issues to deal with, as there always have been.  Details
below.

The board of StarNet Communications, which included Mike Horwath,
decided to change the management structure at Winternet.  While Mike
Horwath may not initially fully agree with the change, the board feels
this will bring Winternet closer to the original vision for the
company: build a team to hook people on the Internet.

Wednesday, July 10th at about 5pm, Michael Horwath formally resigned
from the board of directors.  He retains 1/3rd of the stock in StarNet
Communications.  We hope that Mike will continue to play an active and
supportive role as co-owner.  We greatly appreciate his contributions
to Internet access in Minnesota, and value him as a member of the net
community.

With Mike Horwath's change in role, the support staff at Winternet has
had changes as well.  During this transitional period, we will work
hard to satisfy your needs.

The new system administrators at Winternet are Thomas Keeley
(tomkat@winternet.com) and Mike Pate (vanyell@winternet.com).  Thomas
has been a UNIX system administrator for four years at Copy Sales,
Inc., and is also a charter member of Winternet.  Mike Pate is a UNIX
and Windows NT administrator.  More on the staff in later messages.

We know that you have come to depend on our service and expect the
most from us.  We intend to meet and exceed those expectations.
Change can be unsettling, but we ask for time for you to grow to trust
the new staff as much as you trusted the old one.

If you have questions, mail help@winternet.com.  If you have problems,
mail problems@winternet.com.  If you have suggestions, mail
suggest@winternet.com.  You can also call the office at 333-1505, or
fax us at 333-1507.

Thank you for coming to Winternet.  We hope Winternet will serve all
your Internet needs.

Michael Frankowski
Kevin Mathison

-----

A brief summary of the technical issues follows.

Saturday morning at approximately 5am our main router "winternet-gw"
lost its routing table.  This is the table that tells our systems how
to attach your systems to the Internet.  We rebuilt most of the
routing table; by Sunday morning we were 95% operational.  During this
down time, no news flowed and no mail moved.

From Saturday until Tuesday night, users would occasionally not be
able to log in if they dialed into one of three USR Robotics modem
racks.  This was related to the router table problem.  This is now
fixed.

There were a couple of posts to winternet.announce that were
inappropriate for that newsgroup, and they were cancelled.  We do not
intend this as censorship-- these messages are all perfectly fine in
other newsgroups such as winternet.general, winternet.gripes or
mn.general.

irc.winternet.com is still down, and for now we recommend
irc.law.emory.edu or irc.cris.com to get you online.  Negotiations are
ongoing with IRC operators to place irc.winternet.com back in EF-Net,
one of the best networks around.  We realize how much Internet Relay
Chat is a valued service here at Winternet.  More info as it happens.

During the next few days we will be posting more technical details
about the past weekend to Winternet.Announce.