Nevada/California Streaming Weather Radio

One of our “for fun” projects we recently completed was to add online streaming audio for the two NOAA Weather Radio stations we are able to receive. By utilizing a pair of handheld Midland weather radios tuned to stations WXK58 and WWG20 feeding to our web servers, we are able to offer these live streams on our website. Additionally, we are sending these audio feeds to Weather Underground. These stations also cover some of our nearby neighbors to the west in California.

You can find to these streams online at: http://rollernet.us/wxradio

Whether you’re a local listener or just curious, feel free to listen in.

New AMD Opteron 6136 and 6128 Options

The AMD Opteron 6134 dedicated server option is no longer available due to CPU availability through our normal channels. In its place we now have two new single-socket 8-core dedicated server options: the AMD Opteron 6136 2.4GHz and Opteron 6128 2.0GHz. Any orders in progress for a 6134 will automatically upgraded to a 6136 at no cost.

Dedicated Server Availability from Hard Drive Shortage

Due to hard drive shortages some dedicated server work orders may be delayed. Hard drives for pending dedicated server orders will be on a first-come first-serve basis. At this time we have multiple backorders for hard drives pending fulfillment. Our primary supplier is currently estimating drive availability between February 4th and the 16th, however, they have also indicated these dates may slip later into the month.

Last year’s flooding in Thailand severely impacted hard drive supplies due a global reliance on factories that were directly impacted by flooding. This has caused channel shortfalls, dramatic price increases on remaining stock, and purchase quantity limitations in some cases. While we are doing our best to fulfill requests in a timely manner with what we have available and keep spares in stock to meet our responsibilities to existing customers, some delays may be unavoidable.

Please contact us for specifics on dedicated servers as not all configurations are impacted equally, and some still have immediate availability.

Atom D525 Dedicated Server

We’ve added the Atom D525 to our dedicated server lineup. Mostly comparable to the D510 option, the D525 adds DDR3 memory and has a faster 1.8GHz CPU clock speed. For details see the dedicated servers page on our website.

Mail/DNS “Professional” Service Level Changes

We’re modifying the “Professional” level of our Mail/DNS service lineup:

  • Professional will be repriced to $149/mo.
  • Professional Plus has been discontinued.

All customers that have existing Professional level services will remain unchanged as long as it continues to be renewed on time, including service levels that have been discontinued. However, as of this announcement we are no longer accepting new subscriptions to the discontinued Professional Plus.

New Shared Colocation Brackets

We’ve split our shared colocation offering into two brackets: “small” between 1U to 5U and “large” between 6U to 10U. The monthly pricing for each U is unchanged, but the “large” bracket now includes 3Mbps of committed rate bandwidth and an extra amp of power over “small”. For details see the colocation page on our main website.

Any customers with colocations that fall into the changed bracket will have the additional resources added to their account.

New Interface Graph Options

We’ve added some new graphing options for the interface traffic graphs available to our Colocation, Dedicated Server, and Internet Access customers. Previously the account control center only displayed a 24-hour live (with 15 minute delay) graph; interface graphs are now available with as little as a 5 minute delay from live traffic and with several viewing options from 12-hours to a month.

Default 24-hour graph display. (Note the new buttons above the graph.)

The new 12-hour detail display option.

The new 12-hour detail display option of the same graph.

We’ve also added a 95th percentile line on all traffic graphs, however it’s based on the currently displayed interval, not the full billing month. As such these graphs are not used for burstable billing.

Mac Mini Colocation

We’ve added the Apple Mac Mini back to our colocation page on the main website.

Mac Mini Colocation

The original news post is here, but the quick summary is: you get space for one Mini, /29 IPv4 subnet on a private VLAN, 3 Mbps of commit, and a remote control power outlet.

IPv6 with Android Mail App

We recently noticed a problem with the “Mail” app on Android phones failing to send mail when the phone has an IPv6 connection (either via Wi-Fi or 4G LTE). The problem was traced to the Mail app sending an improperly formatted IPv6 literal in the EHLO command. We’ve updated our outbound mail service to account for this discrepancy.

RFC2821 defines and IPv6 address literals as such:

address-literal = "[" IPv4-address-literal /
                      IPv6-address-literal /
                      General-address-literal "]"

IPv6-address-literal = "IPv6:" IPv6-addr

The Android Mail app is omitting the “IPv6:” string in its literals.

Celebrating Two Years of Uptime

Roller Network is pleased to celebrate our two year mark at our Reno, NV facility on November 22, 2009. Over the last two years our facility has successfully carried out its mission of providing a carrier-class colocation datacenter service to the Northern Nevada region in addition to our worldwide customers who rely on our classic mail services.

Thank you to all of our customers who continue to support us: it is because of your support that we are able to continue to maintain our facility to such standards.