Server NC036, our primary mail server, was apparently down for 34 minutes yesterday, 8 January. Our server itself was not down, but the data centre experienced what seems to have been a partial connectivity issue. In fact, you may not even have noticed it, as we didn’t receive any complaints about the downtime.
According to the data centre’s report, the issue was resolved and it is not expected to recur. We apologise to anyone who was affected.
Server NC041 has been rebooted. This appears to have dealt with the database server issue. We will continue to look for the root cause to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
The database server on server NC041 appears to be having some issues. We are looking into it and will post an update about what we find shortly.
Today we received a number of complaints of connectivity problems to our mail server. However, they were all from Zambia, from the Luangwa Valley to the Copperbelt to Lusaka; nobody else had any issues.
Below is a screenshot of NinerNet’s live status page that was taken moments ago that shows that the mail server (NC036) has been up for 100% of the last 90 days.
NinerNet live status screenshot, 2023-05-18.
In the absence of any other information we can only assume that there was some sort of widespread, country-wide connectivity problem in Zambia late today, for which NinerNet is clearly not responsible. The NinerNet mail servers continued to process inbound email during this time, so even if you couldn’t connect to the mail server, incoming email to you was still collecting on the mail server for your eventual collection.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.
Update, 2023-05-19: One of our clients contacted a Zambian ISP and the problem was blamed on Zambia’s international gateway. Sorry for that!
The issue now appears to be completely resolved. If you’re having any email issues, please do contact NinerNet support and we will look into them. Thank-you.
We have been informed by the data centre where server NC036 is located that, due to “an effect from ongoing data centre maintenance”, there are connectivity issues. We have been noticing intermittent issues with both direct email connections and the webmail, notably slower transactions (e.g., deleting messages, scanning multiple folders, etc.). However, email is still flowing as usual, perhaps with minor delays.
We have opened a ticket with the data centre to determine why the issues are ongoing. We will update you as we receive more information.
Our apologies for not following up this issue within the promised 48 hours.
This issue was traced to a problem with a single website hosted on this server, and the modifications made to this website’s file system. What was done within one account’s file system should not have affected the whole server though, and as a result we have filed a bug report with the control panel vendor.
We do again apologise for this issue, and will endeavour to ensure that it does not become an issue again.
If you have any questions at all about this maintenance, please let us know by contacting NinerNet support. Thank-you for your patience, and continued patronage.
The primary web server (NC041) is again online. It was down for 39 minutes between 05:05 and 05:44 UTC. We’re investigating why this incident happened, and will post further details here within the next 48 hours. Our apologies for the inconvenience.
The primary web server (NC041) is currently down following maintenance. We are investigating. This does not affect email.
Server NC041, the primary web server, experienced connectivity issues between 16:04 and 16:13 earlier today, 28 July, for those 9 minutes. The server was up, but the data centre and our external monitoring service reported a lack of connectivity during that time.
The data centre now reports that it has resolved the issue, and no more issues have been experienced since.
We apologise for this gap in connectivity. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.
| Loc. | System | Status | Ping |
|---|---|---|---|
 | NC023 | Internal | Up? |
 | NC028 | Internal | Up? |
 | NC031 | Internal | Up? |
| NC033 | Operational | Up? |
 | NC034 | Internal | Up? |
 | NC035 | Operational | Up? |
 | NC036 | Operational | Up? |
| NC040 | Internal | Up? |
| NC041 | Operational | Up? |
| NC042 | Operational | Up? |
