This maintenance has started. However, we will not shut down the mail on the primary server until it is necessary to do so. We’ll post an update here when we do.
This maintenance has started. However, we will not shut down the mail on the primary server until it is necessary to do so. We’ll post an update here when we do.
On Sunday, 29 September at 01:00 UTC, we will be performing some extensive maintenance of our email systems. This will necessitate shutting down the primary mail server for a period of time, probably for around two to three hours. Within 24 hours of the start of the maintenance, we will conduct a test that should give us a better idea of the amount of time needed.
During the shut-down the following services will be affected:
The following services will not be affected:
During the maintenance, any email sent to addresses on your domain will be queued on the senders’ mail servers. Once the maintenance is over, this email will be delivered to your account. No email will be lost.
This maintenance is necessary to improve your email service, and we thank you for your patience. Updates will be posted here leading up to, during and following the maintenance. Please inform colleagues, employees and anybody else using email on your domain.
If you have any questions, please contact support and we’ll be happy to assist. During the maintenance, email on the niner.net domain will also be affected, so we ask that if you need to contact us during that time, please either use the contact form on our website, or send email to:
support-september-2013@ninernet.com
To convert the time of this maintenance to your time zone, please use the World Time Server.
Thank-you.
We have identified the particular websites that are being attacked and have made adjustments to try and deflect the attack. In the meantime we have restarted the web server and will continue to monitor the attack.
Additionally, the mail queue has now cleared.
As the title says, it appears that server NC018 is again the target of an attack. We are working to address the issue as quickly as possible.
Server NC018 suffered a denial of service attack beginning at approximately 07:40 on 23 August, UTC. This continued until the server succumbed under the load at about 12:40. This affected all functions of the server: websites, sending and receiving emails, databases, etc.
Unfortunately we did not respond to this situation in a timely manner. This was partially because automated monitoring of server functions had been turned off due to an increasing number of false alarms from the system.
Once the server was rebooted at 13:47 and the attack mitigated, the server then still had a backlog of several thousand emails to process. This took several hours, with the queue being cleared by about 18:35. While emails were “missing” for several hours, no emails should have been lost; they were just delivered several hours late.
We sincerely apologise for the disruption caused by this event. We will reinstate monitoring and the associated actions that are taken when monitoring alarms go off.
We will shortly be responding to all emails and phone messages regarding this incident. If you have any further questions about this event, please contact us.
Over the last few days we have noticed that email to addresses on the zamtel.zm domain have been delayed. In fact, at this point it appears that the Zamtel mail server is down completely.
We also continue to see, as we have for a year or two or more, email to addresses on the iwayafrica.com delayed considerably, usually for as many as several days. This is due to issues with their mail server.
Contrary to the last update on this topic, spam defences on server NC018 are indeed active most of the time. We monitor the server load and turn them off if the load gets too high. However, most of the time the spam defences are up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
We have disabled the spam defences on server NC018. We re-enabled them over the weekend as server loads are down over the weekends.
We have re-enabled the most effective spam defences on server NC018.
Server NC023 went down for maintenance at 19:22 UTC and was back online at 19:32 after successful completion of its maintenance.
Thanks for your patience.
Systems at a Glance:
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? |
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