Categories
Status

Maintenance Notice: 2011-07-22

We need to swap an array controller card in one of our servers due to excessive “verify fail” errors. We’ve already swapped the drive and the problem persists, so we suspect the controller port may be bad. The affected server handles RT and Asterisk for our office. This maintenance will take place after 18:00 UTC-8)

While the affected server is down the following services will be affected:

  • Trouble ticket creation will be delayed (queued in the mail spool)
  • Main office telephones (voice and fax)

We are expecting about 15-30 minutes to unrack the server and replace the array controller. No services will be affected. This post will be updated as needed.

UPDATE: Completed array card swap successfully. Total time 18 minutes.

Categories
Uncategorized

Mid-July Update

It’s been pretty quiet on here lately, but we’re still here. There’s two major things going on right now:

First off, we’re working on some cosmetic changes for the account control center (nicer looking notify/warning/error message displays) and a mass-update function for Primary DNS that will allow you to change matching records in selected zones. This function would be handy for making changes such as updating an IP address or NS record everywhere it appears. The Primary DNS feature has become more popular than when we originally released it and its current functionality is limiting beyond basic applications. Many customers have requested a template function for Primary DNS – and while this is different – it’s the first step in that direction.

Secondly, we are about to embark on a major redesign to the main website (something we don’t have the in-house talent for). Roller Network is in the unique position of offering the only independent carrier-class colocaiton facility in Northern Nevada. Currently the only way to truly appreciate what we can offer is through an on-site tour. Although we’re boutique-sized compared to the mega facilities you’d find in major cities, we offer all of the critical features of those larger facilities plus features above and beyond what our local competitors offer. Being small does have other advantages, such as simpler systems less likely to malfunction, and our customers enjoy an extensive trouble-free history. Many of the people that have toured our facility comment on how unexpected it was to find something like it locally, so we need to update our online presence.

That’s all for now!

Categories
Q&A

Primary DNS and Zone Transfers

We’ve received a couple questions about zone transfer (AXFR) support for our Primary DNS service. Currently we do not have AXFR enabled on the DNS servers that answer requests for Primary DNS zones.

The AXFR limitation is not intentional; unfortunately it’s supported by the DNS server. Primary DNS is served using PowerDNS authoritative server version 2.9.22. It does not support per-zone AXFR ACLs like BIND9 does.

The only option we have would be to allow AXFR to anyone, but for security reasons we don’t want to do that. We can’t globally allow our Secondary DNS to AXFR because that creates a backdoor where anyone with an account could use it as an intermediate AXFR host. (Security aside, most of our customers don’t want AXFR open to the world or IP addresses they don’t control.)

PowerDNS authoritative 3.0 is currently in RC2 stage. This version does have per-zone AXFR capability and we will support it in the control center as soon as possible. It also has other features we’d like to add like DNSSEC and long TXT records.

We’re working on changes to the control center required to support these features but ultimately it requires the servers themselves to be upgraded to either the release candidate or the 3.0 release to support them.

Categories
Announcements

Status of www.rollernetstatus.com

The external status page at www.rollernetstatus.com is currently offline pending a move to a new home. We apologize for any inconvenience. In the meantime, status updates will be posted here directly.

UPDATE: the offsite status page is back. It now has AAAA records as well.
UPDATE2: Oops, the firewall on the host was blocking port 80. It’s been fixed.

Categories
IPv6

World IPv6 Day

World IPv6 day is on June 8, 2011. On this date for 24 hours, many major IPv4-only sites will be temporarily offering their content over IPv6. Some of them have already adopted IPv6, but are not publishing AAAA records for their primary well-known domain. For example:

However, on world IPv6 day the well-known names will have IPv6 and IPv4 (commonly referred to as dual-stacking) for 24 hours. The goal of this test is to motivate internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies to prepare their services for IPv6. This is critical to ensure a successful transition from IPv4.

Roller Network already provides dual-stack IPv6 services for our websites and all major services. Every day is IPv6 day for us, and our customers can rest assured that our service is standard production quality and not a “beta” or “test”. We’ve carefully selected upstream providers that can provide dual-stack IPv6, so we’re proud to say that Roller Network has a fully dual-stack native network – from border to core and core to edge. All of our customers from free Secondary DNS to colocation, hosting and wireless internet have IPv6 capabilities. For more information see the ISOC World IPv6 Day page.

Here’s a handful of test sites (in no particular order) you can use to test your IPv6 readiness: