Yesterday, December 21, we lost our 'net connection for a few hours.  Some sites were re-directed to one backup server, but others, especially our main site was inaccessible.  I had originally thought we got a new IP address, but we're still on the old one.  Also, our physical move from Ellen Street to Stuyvesant is complete, so the server at http://shoutcastradio.cjb.net should be back online by Wednesday, December 28th.

I have been monitoring our main server and found a few incidents of unexpected restarts in the event logs; most times these restarts occur between 8:00am and 11:30am Eastern time; downtime is limited to about 2 minutes while the OS reloads.  I am still trying to isolate the cause; for now they remain attributed to power fluctuations which our UPS cannot handle.  An upgrade of our Uninterruptible Power Supply is pending.  Although the changeover to a new UPS would require us to briefly shut off both servers on purpose, as with a traditional OS reboot, the downtime would be short.  Expect this changeover to take place either by the end of this month or the end of January 2006.

A connection problem with one of our servers was causing excess bandwidth to be used, thus slowing down access to our sites and services.  This issue has been found and corrected; I will be closely monitoring the servers and our router for the next few days to make sure the issue does not repeat itself.  Apologies for the inconvenience.

Once again, Ruggiero AV Services is on the move!   The current Ellen Street drop-off location will no longer be valid after December 15th; the new address will be up on our main page soon.  Our main server location in Linden will not change, and Shoutcast will be back on the air as soon as possible!

Yahoo Mail has apparently blocked our IP address due to the use of the FreePOPs software  -- this results in a message such as AUTH FAILED when checking Yahoo mail.  See this link for more information.  At this time, if you really want reliable POP3 access to Yahoo e-mail, I must suggest that you sign up for Yahoo's Premium mail services, at $19.99 / year.

Today our servers were down from about 11:00AM Eastern to 3:00PM Eastern due to a known power outage in Linden, NJ - the power grid was being upgraded, with no real ETA as to when the upgrade would be completed.  Customers will be compensated for any downtime.

I have been working with FreePOPs these last few days, trying to resolve an issue involving messages not getting deleted from the mail server upon download to a mail client... this results in duplicate messages being downloaded.  Be assured that this issue is still being investigated and an update will be made here when anything changes.
Update for July 19th -- e-mail services seem to be operating normally now. 
Yahoo service is still intermittant, and may have to do more with Yahoo's webmail than with FreePops.

Well, you can take everything from my July 8th update with a grain of salt, because with some additional creativity, all websites are working properly on standard ports with no re-directs, aside from those with domains which don't offer direct control of DNS.  This also means that you can once again use ftp://ruggiero.cjb.net  as well as the aforementioned ftp://avserv.cjb.net -- the important part is having the proper username and password combination, so you will see the proper directories when you log in.

After operating from our mirror server for the past week or so, we are now back running at our usual location.  Due to ISP changes, I am using various methods to run our different services under a single IP address.  One change that must take place due to this re-arranging of services is FTP access - customers should now use ftp://avserv.cjb.net -- NOT RUGGIERO.CJB.NET.  Your username and password for the server has not changed.  Please let me know if you have problems connecting.  Another issue is that our main web server's content has now been internally forwarded to port 8000, although you won't see a visible change in the way sites operate.  However, if you have PROBLEMS accessing specific sites or URLs, please let me know and I will investigate it.

On Friday, May 27, 2005, we lost our base connection to the Internet, which brought down BOTH our mail and web servers.  Things were down for over 8 hours until I could restore a proper recent backup of the web server to a new machine, running on a slightly slower connection.  Mail services were also routed over to the "slower" link, although it was still faster than a typical T1 line.  I was able to get mail service restored at the original server location on June 4, while our websites continued to run on the slower link until June 7th.  All services are running normally now, and I will be setting up a second server at another location for ruggiero.cjb.net in the next few days, to provide an exact mirror of the content.

As of this writing a bug has been discovered in the current module that grabs Hotmail and MSN e-mail from the web. The common error says "Unknown Error, Please Fix".   Rest assured that we are working on this problem, as are the folks at FreePops.
MAY 27, 2005 -- PROBLEM RESOLVED!  THANKS TO RUSSELL S. OVER AT FREEPOPS.ORG . . .

The e-mail beta test period mentioned on April 5th will end on SATURDAY, MAY 14th.   The software has proven to be stable and is now ready to be installed permanently.  Those of you using our main server for e-mail can go back to using the original server (remember to change INCOMING MAIL only).  Also, I will be adding a new machine for web services and other duties during the day; it SHOULDN'T affect our other websites and services, but anything is possible - if we DO have any downtime it should be limited to a few minutes at most.

Happened to be monitoring the stream around the start of the broadcast, and was listening to the Bon Jovi tribute, when my player started "stuttering" Not sure if it affected all listeners, but to make sure things were in sync again, I restarted the Shoutcast server at 10:30PM and proceeded to the next track in our playlist, so the rest of the Bon Jovi  tribute never completed.  But then again, it's been playing for the past few weeks, and new material should be coming up next week as we enter May.   Stay tuned!

If you are currently using the $5.95 dialup ISP Access4Less or the lower-cost Access4Free, know that they will NO LONGER OFFER Internet service, starting on May 20.  This in no way affects OUR websites, but since these ISPs have been previously recommended by Ruggiero AV Services, we are offering this information as a courtesy. For more information see: http://www.access4less.net/ or http://www.access4free.com

Our main server has been upgraded with Xitami version 2.5c ... all websites have been migrated from the old software. Please e-mail me at ruggiero@4email.net if you have any problems or questions.

Our "new" e-mail relay beta test is ongoing, and is looking good so far; I am going to try migrating to the new system either at the end of this month or in the middle of next month.   Also, I moved Shoutcast over to another machine last night (all web/IP addresses are still the same), and I am currently running the stream until about 11PM Eastern tonight as a test.   So, consider this a bonus broadcast!

We are currently beta-testing a software package to extend our "mail relay" and http-to-POP3 services to other domains.   We currently support Yahoo.com, and hope to also support MSN/Hotmail (Microsoft had disabled the free use of Outlook or Outlook Express to all except paid hotmail or MSN Internet accounts). For more information on our updated mail services, which will continue to be free, please see http://www.ruggieroav.com/avserv/email

Our main server was down this morning (from about 10:30AM Eastern until about 12PM) due to a power failure - what's odd is that our UPS kept the aux server running, so some folks didn't notice.  Guess you can't win them all, can you?

There are currently problems with the service that provides our *.cjb.net addresses.  Our sites and services are not accessible at all times.  Technicians are currently working on the problem, and it should be resolved ASAP
Services restored 1PM Eastern

Our "Yahoo Mail Relay" server as well as our message board is down at this writing - please be patient and services will be restored as soon as possible.

May 2005 be very exciting and prosperous for all of you!