As of about 8:40pm the modem pools are once again completely operational.
People who do NOT use a dial-up script have been able to dial-in since
approximately 6:30.
We were able to allow people doing straight PPP or terminal sessions into
the modem pools by turning off the authentication requirement while we
worked on getting everything running again.

However, turning off authentication removes the "Username:" prompt that
appears upon connection.  Without that prompt, the dial-up scripts just sit
in a wait state. So, those people whostill use the scripts were not able to
use the modem pools until about 8:40pm unless they knew enough to disable
the script (highly unlikely).

We apologize for the inconvenience this database failure has caused.  We
will be implementing greater redundancy in our systems to avoid such
failures in the future.

Jeff Letourneau

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Letourneau" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 6:38 PM
Subject: Authentication problems....


Our primary authentication database server failed this afternoon at approx.
4:30pm shutting people out of our e-mail servers and modem pools.  As of
approx. 5:30pm we had a backup database up and running and the e-mail server
pointing at it.

We are currently reconfiguring our authentication servers for the modem
pools to point at the backup database.  We hope to have modem access
restored shortly.  I will update you when everything is functional again.
Jeff Letourneau