We’re Back
We were offline for a while because our new ISP gave us a DSL modem that blocked all port 80 requests. We had to switch away from AT&T after 10 years because they started using Reno as a test market for charging $1 per GB of transfer (upload + download).
GM Gets Free Pass on Site Cleanup
GM’s government-organized bankruptcy just might have freed them of the requirement to clean up their old sites by leaving “unwanted assets” behind. Expensive toxic sites aren’t usually on anyone’s Christmas list.
Detroit Free Press: GM gets to dump its polluted sites (broken) archive link
AT&T Now Censoring the Internet
It just came across NANOG that AT&T is filtering (on DSL accounts) content. The only one I’m aware of at this writing is 4chan. I won’t disagree that some questionable stuff comes across there, but I do object to AT&T deciding what content is allowed over their services. Don’t like 4chan? Then don’t go there. Easy.
UPDATE: It turns out that AT&T was doing DDoS mitigation without actually bothering to tell anyone about it. Guess what guys? The internet moves faster than your PR department. Better use that shitload of money you’re sitting on to keep someone in PR on call in case you have to make a weekend press release rather than leaving it up to rampant speculation.
151 Front Street Fire
Not content to let the Fisher Plaza fire outdo it, the 151 Front Street carrier hotel in Toronto is on fire. As of this writing, whatever happened is apparently with 17 units and being called a 2-alarm fire:
(http://www.toronto.ca/fire/cadinfo/livecad.htm)
Rumor was that Peer1’s suite is on fire, and this has been confirmed as “an issue” with “fire” on their status board. Reports currently range from just their suite to the whole building without power. I’m sure there will be more on this in the morning.
UPDATE: Peer1 originally said the whole building lost power:
But they since redacted that and are now saying just the 7th and 8th floors:
UPDATE 2: A post to the NANOG mailing list confirms that indeed the initial report by Peer1 was incorrect and they still had power (or power from the generator) to their 7th floor suite.
MORNING UPDATE: The problem was completely localized to Peer1 due to one of their UPS systems (most likely a battery) catching fire. Remember kids: keep your UPS systems in a separate room, inspect your batteries often, and install your distribution panels with an external bypass.
AUTHORIZE.NET Claims Redundancy During Outage
There was an electrical fire this morning at Fisher Plaza in Seattle (“the only mission-critical business community in the Northwest” according to their Google search summary as fisherplaza.com is down) resulting in a full outage. The news reports a vault fire, while another source on NANOG says generator transfer switch fire. Could be both as they’re without power at this point. Anyway, one of the affected parties was the well-known credit card processor authorize.net which apparently had a full halt on transactions when the Fisher Plaza equipment went offline.
Here’s what auhtorize.net had to say about the outage on their twitter account:
Uh, no you certainly don’t have redundancy. If it’s not working it’s not “fully redundant”. Period. Yes, you have an alternate site you’re trying to bring online, but it’s obviously not redundant.
UPDATE: A more detailed list of companies affected by the Fisher Plaza outage.