Categories
Fun Stuff

Our New Weather Camera

Have you ever wondered what things look like outside from our offices? If so, then you’re in luck! We recently put a camera up on the roof as a weather camera. It’s on our weather radio page (http://rollernet.us/wxradio) and updates every minute. You’ll need to reload the page though since it isn’t auto-refreshing quite yet.

The mountains in the distance on the right that are unfortunately partially blocked by the trees across the street are Mt. Rose and Slide Mountain, home of the Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe resort. The camera is facing slightly southwest. The image below is hotlinked to the updating image as well.

Weather Camera (South Reno, NV facing Mt. Rose)

We’ll probably do some other fun stuff with it later such as a live stream option, auto-updating snapshot, archives, and possibly more cameras as time permits. We are currently uploading the image to Weather Underground every minute. For now we have the basic snapshot and it’s a start.

Categories
Fun Stuff

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.

Categories
Fun Stuff

A Year With Utility Power

It dawned on us that it’s been a while since we’ve had a power outage or phase imbalance requiring us to switch to generator power (although we do test every two weeks on load), so we did some digging and discovered that indeed the last time there was a utility power outage was back on October 24, 2010.

Over the last year we’ve only observed minor power flickering during weather and at least one lightening strike that caused a citywide (as observed by all of our remote monitoring points simultaneously) hiccup. All of these events where cleaned up by our online UPS system without going to battery.

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Fun Stuff Status

Year-Round Economizer Cooling

It’s just coming up on 04:00 in the morning here at Roller Network on a Saturday (we’re doing some off-hour line card insertions), and even though it’s summer in our part of the world the high desert climate of Reno still lends itself to suitable economizer cooling mode on our primary facility cooling systems every night almost year-round. Right now it’s about 60F (15C) outside and we’re using that air for cooling rather than run the compressors.

That’s pretty good considering we’re not way up in Alaska, and much better than other competing desert locations at night like Las Vegas (78F/25C) or Phoenix (88F/31C) where the night temperatures are much higher than ours in Reno.

Categories
Fun Stuff IPv6

World IPv6 Day Connectivity Chart

The folks over at RIPE NCC put together the RIPE World IPv6 Day Connectivity Chart so you can test your connectivity to various sites for the upcoming world IPv6 day on June 8, 2011.

Roller Network's test results from our office.

Roller Network offers native IPv6 services from our facility in Reno, Nevada. If you’re interested in a dedicated server, colocaiton, or mail hosting with IPv6 on a fully native network (no tunnels) we’re the place to be.

World IPv6 Day Connectivity Chart