 The Communications Control Center (CCC) enables you to read your email from any standard internet connection, manage your account, setup autoresponders, control your email filters, and much, much more. It can be accessed from www.avvantamail.com. |
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The support desk will be closed Tuesday, December 25th in observance of the Christmas holiday. We will return to our normal support schedule Wednesday, December 26th.The support desk will be closed early (5pm) Monday, December 31st and closed Tuesday, January 1st in observance of the New Years holiday. We will return to our normal support schedule Wednesday, January 2nd. Holiday scheduling is contingent upon the World not ending Friday, December 21st, in which case the support desk will be closed indefinitely. Have a wonderful holiday!
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Avvanta will be performing network maintenance between 12:01am Pacific and 4:00am Pacific Thursday, October 25th. This maintenance will disrupt access to email and hosted web pages for numerous, brief periods during the work. This work will not affect DSL or Dial-up connectivity, nor will it affect the TrueRing phone service.
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Avvanta will be performing major infrastructure maintenance on Thursday morning, September 6th between 12:01AM and 5:00AM Pacific time. During this maintenance there will be total disruption in all Email and Web Hosting services, including our own web sites and the CCC. This maintenance will not affect DSL or Dial-up connectivity, nor will it affect the TrueRing phone service.
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Avvanta Administrators will again be performing load balancer testing Thursday morning, August 9th, between 12:01AM and 1:00AM Pacific Time. During this work you should expect periodic outages of our main web site and the CCC.
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Avvanta Administrators will be performing load balancer maintenance Thursday morning, July 26th, between 12:01AM and 1:00AM Pacific Time. During this work you should expect periodic outages of our main web site and the CCC.
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We will be conducting very brief maintenance of the CCC database this afternoon between 12:01pm and 12:30pm. This will cause Avvantamail to be unavailable for approximately 5 minutes while we make some configuration changes. We have chosen to conduct this work mid-day rather than during our normal maintenance window to allow us to quickly identify and correct any problems that might develop as a result of the changes. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
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CenturyLink will be performing maintenance on DSL circuits Thursday morning, May 3rd from 01:00am to 06:00am PDT. This maintenance will cause two brief outages of 5 to 10 minutes each during this time frame. |
As a result of the sharp increase in both the quantity and sophistication of fraudulent "phishing" emails, Avvanta has taken steps to try and mitigate this type of email threat.
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Our office will be closed Thursday, November 24th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We will have reduced staff available Friday, November 25th.
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On the morning of Thursday July 21st, between 12:01 am and 4:00 am, Avvanta will be performing maintenance on DSL hardware that will temporarily interrupt DSL internet service. This maintenance will only affect Avvanta DSL customers. This maintenance will not require any action on your part.
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 Account statements are normally processed on the 2nd of each month. For this reason the printed statement you receive via email or postal mail includes all charges to your account through the 1st of each month. Due to the up-coming holiday statement processing was conducted a day early. For this reason the initial statement you will receive will not show this months charges even though they have been accurately and correctly applied. We will be re-sending statements again on the 5th and we apologize for any confusion this may have caused.
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Avvanta Administrators will be performing very light mail server maintenance Thursday morning, June 30th, between 12:01AM and 1:00AM Pacific Time. During this work you should expect minor slowdowns in mail and webmail service but no loss of connectivity or service availability.
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The maintenance scheduled for Thursday morning has been rescheduled for Friday morning. Avvanta Administrators will be performing server maintenance Friday, March 18th, between 12:01AM and 2:00AM Pacific Time. During this work you should expect intermittent disruptions of connectivity and service availability.
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We have made some significant changes to the way incoming mail is handled which may impact the mail you receive. Please read this notice carefully if you make use of your Avvanta mailbox.
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We are experiencing issues with two of our DNS servers. DNS service is available however the down servers are affecting some services. Avvanta administrators are working on the issue and will update this notification as information becomes available.
Update 21:50: This issue has now been resolved. The problem was traced to a faulty switch that required rewiring to work around the failed unit. Services impacted by this outage included connection authentication (DSL and DialUp), DNS, and ironically enough our NOC Notification System. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
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We have successfully completed rebuilding our secondary storage system which has been causing so many issues over the last few days. Currently the data from the primary system is now syncing with the secondary. This process is estimated to take between 12 to 16 more hours, so between 8am and Noon Wednesday morning this process should be done. Sync time varies due to system load and activity so a more accurate estimate is not available. We apologize for the frustration this repair process has caused and thank you very much for your patience. We will update this notice again when the process is completed. Update 10:00am Jan 18: This process is now complete. Issues accessing and using the CCC should now be fully resolved.
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With the work done on the secondary storage array we are now conducting a rebuild of the data on that array. This requires a great deal of data transfer on the back-end servers. This data migration is causing some slowdowns and occasional timeouts on the CCC. We have done what we can to minimise this effect however we will not be able to completely prevent it from occurring. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
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Avvanta administrators will be conducting emergency maintenance on our backup storage array Friday afternoon. The work is expected to take approximately one hour. As this is our secondary storage system and is not currently in service this maintenance should not affect services or connectivity in any way.
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Avvanta Administrators will be performing very brief maintenance on DNS services Wednesday, December 1st, between 12:01AM and 12:30AM Pacific Time. The work being performed will have no impact on connectivity and should have little to no impact on service availability or performance.
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Avvanta, a leader in Internet Services in the Northwest, is proud to announce our 3Play bundled services! You can now get Television, Internet, Phone service, and Home Alarm Services through Avvanta. We have a variety of options available at prices that fit your budget. You no longer need the Cable Company or FIOS - you just need Avvanta!
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The machines that make up the CCC cluster will be undergoing extensive operating system and software upgrades this Wednesday starting at approximately 12 Noon. Unlike normal maintenance periods this work is being conducted during the day. The CCC is such that we must know immediately if anything is not working properly so that it can be corrected (or the changes backed out) as swiftly as possible. This work has been completed. There were some issues relating to attachments as well as replying to email that have now been resolved. Thank you for your patience.
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Avvanta Administrators will be performing maintenance on DNS and CCC services Tuesday, September 21st, between 12:01AM and 4:00AM Pacific Time. The work being performed will have no impact on connectivity and should have little to no impact on service availability or performance.
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Avvanta Administrators will be performing maintenance to the network core Thursday, September 16th, between 12:01AM and 4:00AM Pacific Time. During this work you should expect intermittent disruptions of internet connectivity. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused during this maintenance.
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| Network status and notifications are now posted to our Network Status system. The most recent service affecting outage information is posted here for 48 hours. Archived event information is retained for 30 days in our RSS Feed. Subscribe to this feed to receive immediate notification of service affecting outages or issues.
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We briefly lost power to a network switch this evening. This outage prevented access to our web and mail servers. General connectivity for DSL and dial-up customers was not affected. The outage lasted approximately 35 minutes. We apologize for any inconvenience.
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Due to a bug with the new year in the spam filtering software, some legitimate mail may have been inadvertently tagged as spam and sent to your Trash folder. This bug will only have affected email delivered after the 1st of the year. Please be sure to investigate your Trash folder at the CCC to recover any legitimate email and we apologize for any inconvenience.
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The support desk will be closed Friday, December 25th in observance of the Christmas holiday. We will have limited phone support on Saturday, December 26th (reduced staff may result in abnormal hold time) We will return to our normal support schedule Sunday, December 27th. The support desk will be closed early (5pm) Thursday, December 31st and closed Friday, January 1st in observance of the New Years holiday. Have a wonderful holiday! |
The support desk will be closed Thursday November 26th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We will have limited phone support on Friday November 27th (reduced staff may result in abnormal hold time) We will return to our normal support schedule Saturday, November 28th. Have a wonderful holiday!
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Qwest will be performing maintenance on the circuits that serve Qwest DSL connections between 12:01AM and 4:00AM Thursday morning, November 12th. This maintenance will cause an interruption in Qwest DSL service while Qwest makes changes on the circuit. No other servers or services will be affected by this maintenance.
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With the latest phishing and virus emails making the rounds we are taking this opportunity to again remind all customers of Avvanta's account security policies.- We will never send you an unsolicited file attachment and ask you to open or run it.
- We will never send you an unsolicited link to a web site asking you to visit it.
- We will never ask for your personal account information. (unless we are replying to a request you initiated)
- We will never ask for your password. (unless we are replying to a request you initiated)
If you ever receive an unsolicited email claiming to be from Avvanta that requests any personal or account information do not respond to that email, do not click any links within it and do not open any attachments that come with it.Remember that it is never an imposition upon us to verify information you have received. If you are ever in doubt about the validity of an email please call or email Avvanta Support for verification.
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The Avvanta operations team will be performing general system and network maintenance on the core network routers and select servers within our Washington data centers on Wednesday morning, July 22nd between 12:01AM, and 4AM PDT. Customer impact is anticipated to be very minimal.
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A Qwest DS3 connecting Qwest DSL circuits to our network dropped at approximately 10am PDT this morning. Qwest engineers are currently working on the issue however no estimated time of repair is available yet. We will update this notice as the situation develops. Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.
Update 12:15pm PDT: The circuit is back in service. Qwest engineers will be closely monitoring the circuit for the next 24 hours for any further issues. Thank you for your patience.
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We have made a policy change that affects all customers who forward their Avvanta email to outside addresses. This change only affects customers who forward their email but did not already have Advanced Spam Protection enabled.
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Avvanta technicians will be performing maintenance to network equipment Thursday, April 16th, between 12:01AM and 4:00AM Pacific Time. During this work there may be a brief disruption of internet connectivity for some customers. Administrators don't expect outages to be any more than a 10-15 minutes each and limited to two occurrences in total as we swap UPS systems. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused during this maintenance.
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Our Support lines were down from 3:40pm Pacific to approximately 5:00pm due to a misconfiguration. All Support lines have been restored to service and we apologize for any inconvenience. |
The inter-LATA aggregation carrier for Qwest DSL service has had a major switch failure affecting DSL service for Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico and South Dakota. We have no estimated time of repair as yet.
Updated 6:34pm: Service has been restored in all affected locations. Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.
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| Internet Security continues to be challenging for everyone and this week is no different, as the latest computer worm has made new headlines in the media. Internet worms, Malware, and Phishing attacks are on the rise making it important everyone stay vigilant in fighting Internet attacks and scams. Avvanta recommends to all our customers to keep your anti-virus and operating software up to date. In addition, make sure your system is set to do security scans on a regular basis. Security experts are warning that a recent computer virus (named Conficker) that has been spreading very quickly throughout the world may be set to activate itself on April 1st, 2009, and it's no joke.
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One of our providers has notified us they will be performing maintenance on circuits that will affect Avvanta customers. The maintenance will be from 12:01am (Pacific) Wed March 18th through 5am Wed March 18th.
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A major fiber cut has occurred in Florida affecting connectivity for the majority of the State. This will affect customers connecting from Florida as well as access to sites or networks serviced by that locale. The Estimated Time of Repair is 10PM tomorrow, February 26th.
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The long talked about changes to our shell server and DNS server infrastructure have been completed. The changes should be transparent to all users, with the notable exception of shell (SSH) access.
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The Support desk will be closed on Thursday, December 25th in observance of the Christmas Holiday. We will be closed Thurday, January 1st in observance of the New Years holiday. Please stay safe (and warm!) Have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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The support desk will be closed Thursday November 24th and Friday November 25th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We will be open normal hours Saturday (10am to 2pm Pacific) Have a wonderful holiday!
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Now until the end of 2008 we are waiving first year registration fees on .info domains! Save $15 and grab your own little piece of the Internet!
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As mentioned in a previous update the existing DNS and shell server (Animal) is long past due for retirement. Unfortunately with the number of services on that machine it is no simple matter to replace, so we'll be conducting the change in stages. Stage One changes will affect shell and (to a much lesser extent) FTP access.
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One of our Verizon DS3s has again developed severe packet loss this morning at approximately 9:30am. (One week to the day from the previous episode) Verizon engineers have been notified and are working on the problem. We do not yet have an estimated time of repair. We apologize for the inconvenience and will update this announcement when we have additional information.
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One of our Verizon DS3s has developed severe packet loss this morning at approximately 10am. Verizon engineers have been notified and are working on the problem. We do not yet have an estimated time of repair. We apologize for the inconvenience and will update this announcement when we have additional information.
Update 1:00pm: All circuit issues have been resolved. Thank you for your patience.
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Since the emergence of the Kaminsky DNS flaws we have been taking steps to update our BIND DNS servers to prevent the flaw from affecting our systems and customers. The last of those changes was made live Tuesday, July 29. Due to an oversight some customers were unable to resolve hostnames last night and early this morning. That has been corrected. More changes are on the way.
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One of our Verizon circuit providing DSL connectivity has developed severe errors and we have been notified by Verizon that they are taking the circuit offline periodically for repairs. This will affect most Verizon circuits for at least the next hour and perhaps longer. We have no estimated time of repair as yet but will update this notice once more information is available. We apologize for this inconvenience.
Update: The circuit problems have resisted all efforts by Verizon engineers to repair and is still causing errors on DSL circuits. (Symptoms manifest as periodic severe packet loss)
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With the number of "phishing" style emails multiplying a reminder is in order as to your account security and our policies. It is important that everyone know what to expect and perhaps more importantly what not to expect from us.- The most important reminder: We do not need your password for anything and will never ask for it in an email.
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The support desk will be closed Friday in observance of the Independence Day holiday. We will be open normal hours on Saturday (10am to 2pm PDT)
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Qwest is having circuit issues which are affecting all Qwest DSL connections. Symptoms include dropped connections and severe packet loss. Qwest has dispatched engineers to repair the circuit but no ETR is currently available. We will update this notice as conditions and information changes.
Update: Qwest has resolved the majority of issues as of approximately 11am PDT. Qwest will be monitoring the circuits involved for the next 24 hours.
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This month's maintenance window ran longer than anticipated, specifically affecting dial-up, NNTP, and Qwest DSL authentication attempts as we brought a new authentication server online. Dial-up and Qwest DSL authentication was restored at approximately 5:20am PDT. NNTP authentication should be restored shortly. We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience caused by the extended delay.
Update: (Authenticated) NNTP service is again available. |
Avvanta will be performing upgrades to network equipment on Thursday June 26th, between 12:01AM and 2:00AM PDT. During this time there will be brief intermittent outages in internet connectivity as equipment is upgraded. This work requires no action on your part.
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Over the last several weeks we have been analyzing mail patterns in our continuing effort to improve our spam filters. As some have recently noticed, the result of our daily investigations into the sources of spam is having a major impact on the amount of junk getting through to your inbox.
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Avvanta will be performing upgrades to network equipment and related servers on Thursday May 15th, between 12:01AM and 2:00AM PDT. During this time there will be intermittent outages in internet connectivity as equipment is upgraded. This work requires no action on your part.
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As mentioned in our Service Advisory, the maintenance last night to install the new storage array was a complicated, difficult procedure. The good news is that the new storage system is performing flawlessly. The bad news is that not everything is back to 100% as yet.
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Avvanta will be performing upgrades to network equipment and related servers on Thursday May 1st, between 12:01AM and 4:00AM PDT. During this time there will be intermittent outages in internet connectivity as equipment is upgraded. This work requires no action on your part.
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At approximately 12:20pm PDT a border router handling one of our incoming Qwest DS3 circuits suffered a route failure. This resulted in intermittent connection failures for the affected Qwest DSL circuits. As of 12:50pm the router is in service however it will continue to experience connectivity issues as it rebuilds the affected circuits. (It has to rebuild several thousand circuits on-the-fly, which is causing significant load and slow responses) This process should be complete within the next 10 to 20 minutes, resuming normal operations. We apologize for the inconvenience.
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Avvanta will be performing upgrades to network equipment on Thursday April 10th, between 12:01AM and 4:00AM PDT. During this time there will be brief intermittent outages in internet connectivity as equipment is upgraded. This work requires no action on your part.
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Qwest is experiencing a significant DSL outage in the Seattle area. Qwest is aware of the problem and engineers are already working on repairs. Qwest has initially provided a 24-48 hour ETR however from previous experience Qwest generally beats their initial estimates by a substantial margin. As a reminder our Standard, SOHOxl, and SOHOxs DSL accounts are provided dial-up access. If the outage is extended please consider this means of alternative access. Please call our office if you need assistance configuring your computer to use dial-up service. |
We are porting our toll free support number (888-662-5274) to a new carrier. The number will be unavailable for a short time today while we route the number on to a new circuit. Our primary number (425-818-6500) is still available for support calls. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Update 3:25pm: The number port has been completed and our toll-free number is again available.
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Avvanta will be performing upgrades to Avvanta network backbone equipment on Thursday March 27th, between 12:01AM and 2:00AM PDT. During this time there will be brief intermittent outages in internet connectivity as equipment is upgraded. This work requires no action on your part.
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At 2:45pm PST an inter-LATA carrier circuit in the Portland, Oregon LATA went down affecting all Qwest DSL circuits in that area. Engineers have already been dispatched and Estimated Time of Repair for this outage is approximately 7pm PST. Update: Service was restored at approximately 7pm. It may be necessary to powercycle the DSL modem to restore service. Unplug the power from the DSL modem, leave it unplugged for 15 to 20 seconds, then plug it back in. The modem will take approximately 1 minute to sync and reconnect. If you are still experiencing difficulties after this procedure please call our office.
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We have received notification from our carrier that the primary circuit for DSL service in Salt Lake City and surrounding areas will be down this evening starting at approximately 10pm MST. The outage is expected to last no longer than 15 minutes as the circuit is moved to a new panel. We apologize for any inconvenience.
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Avvanta will be performing upgrades to Avvanta network backbone equipment on Thursday February 28th, between 12:01AM and 4:00AM PST. During this work there will be some internet routing instabilities as equipment is upgraded. There will also be brief intermittent disruptions of internet connectivity. Administrators do not expect outages to be any more than a 10 to 15 minutes each while the upgrades are completed.
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Qwest and Mammoth Networks have informed us they will be performing a physical circuit move tonight between 10pm PST and 10:45pm PST. This will affect all DSL circuits in the Salt Lake City, Utah LATA. The actual outage time should be very brief within the maintenance window (a few minutes) as the job is essentially one technician in Salt Lake unplugging a cable while another in Billings plugs the new one in.
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A milestone no one really wanted to see hit, but a morbid curiosity none-the-less. Over 1 billion spam messages filtered since March 5th, 2004. That's an average of 8.3 spam emails every second of every day for the last 4 years.
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Wednesday morning (Jan 23) saw a repeat of the same file system issue that occurred a few weeks ago. While we had updated our monitoring tools to watch for this type of system issue they unfortunately did not work as intended.
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A fiber cut at approximately 10:30am PST in Portland Oregon has disrupted DSL service for all customers in the Oregon LATA. Splice trucks arrived on-sight at approximately 1:30pm and are currently working on repairs. No estimated time of repair has been provided by the carrier. This notice will be updated as information is received.
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Avvanta will be performing maintenance to the Avvanta network core on Thursday Januray 17th, between 12:01 am and 4:00 am PST. During this work there is the potential for brief, intermittent disruptions of internet connectivity. Administrators don't expect outages to be any more than a few minutes each. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused during this maintenance.
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Our call center will be available 9am to 3pm on Monday, December 24th. We will be closed for the holiday on December 25th returning to normal hours on Wednesday, December 26th. Happy Holidays! |
The NNTP service has been updated and, with a small work-around, should now allow authenticated access from anywhere. There are now two news server aliases to choose from:
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Avvanta will be performing emergency maintenance to the Avvanta network core on Thursday December 20th between 12:01 am and 4:00 am PST. During this work there is the potential for brief, intermittent disruptions of internet connectivity. Administrators don't expect outages to be more than a few minutes in total. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused during this maintenance.
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An issue affected the storage array for most of this morning, specifically affecting about 25% of customers. Symptoms would have included failed mail logins, failed FTP logins etc. (Essentially if the process needed access to your files or mail that process would have failed) The problem has been resolved and we apologize for the inconvenience. Mr Murphy has been working overtime on us for the last week and here's hoping he takes a vacation real soon now. |
One of our Qwest DS3 circuits dropped this morning at approximately 10:05am. Avvanta and Qwest technicians are aware of and working on the issue.
Update 12:06pm: The DS3 service has been restored and all Qwest DSL connections should be working properly. Customers with Static IP addressing (SOHOxl or SOHOxs) may have initially received a dynamic IP when their modem reconnected (with the circuit down authentication could not access the correct data) Powercycle your DSL modem and it will reconnect with the proper Static information. Our apologies for any inconvenience. |
One of the circuits handling aggregate DSL connections between Qwest and most of the western United States is down. This is affecting connectivity for all of our Qwest DSL customers outside of Washington State for the last several hours. We do not yet have an estimated time of repair from the provider but will update this notice when we receive more information.
Update 09:30: The circuit has been repaired and all DSL connections should be working properly at this time.
Update 15:20: The same problem from this morning has repeated this afternoon. The circuit provider is aware of the problem and service will be restored as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Update 17:18: The circuit problem has been resolved by the provider. We will continue to monitor the issue over the weekend in case it re-occurs.
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We've encountered a bug with the authentication for the news service that is preventing many connections from succeeding. We should have a fix in place early this week. Our apologies for the inconvenience and we will update this as soon as the fix is available. |
With the holiday shopping season upon us it should come as no surprise that the spammers have greatly increased their efforts to reduce your Email to a useless pile of junk. The Advanced Spam Protection filters have averaged 1.1 million filtered spams daily for the last 20 days - and the filters blew past the 1 million mark at 9:30am this morning. We're on pace to see the filters deal with 2.5+ million today alone. Protect your email and enable the Advanced Spam Protection filters on your mailboxes.
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The Avvanta NNTP (Usenet News) service has been updated. The news server accepts NNTP Authentication rather than relying upon IP address to authenticate access as it did in the past. The advantage is that the SuperNews news feed provided with your account can now be accessed from anywhere, not just from Avvanta dialup or DSL connections. The speed of the connection has also been altered.
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Avvanta will be performing emergency maintenance on the electrical services that supply power to Avvanta's core network routers. The work is scheduled from 12:01AM to 4:00AM Saturday morning, November 10th. Avvanta does not expect any disruption in services while this maintenance is being completed. There is always the possibility of some unforeseen issue that could extend the maintenance time.
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CompleteNet customers who use dialup numbers ending in 4888 will be affected by a renumbering. The telephone number used to connect to Avvanta will be changing on Wednesday, November 7th. (Note: This date was extended to November 30th) This change only affects those who dial in using a telephone number ending in 4888.
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There will be a very brief disruption of Verizon circuits at approximately 1:00 am on Thursday, November 1st. This outage should last less than 5 minutes as we finalize Verizon's circuit move from the last two days.
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Verizon has confirmed that their circuit move is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning, October 30th at 6am. The move of all circuits should be completed by Wednesday October 31st at 3pm.This change will cause an interruption in your DSL service of approximately 30 minutes sometime during this time period while the changes are made by Verizon. This service interruption only affects Verizon DSL circuits.
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The Advanced Spam Protection filters have received a major update and should now be considerably more effective against the newer forms of spam hitting the system. As a reminder, Advanced Spam Protection is not enabled by default. The filters must be deliberately enabled for each mailbox. Visit the CCC at www.avvantamail.com to edit your rules - in the Tools menu under Advanced Spam Protection. |
Update: Circuit move completed successfully. Update: The circuit move is currently in progress and going very smoothly. There was one unexpected problem during the first hour that was quickly corrected. Qwest has confirmed that the circuit move delayed from last week will occur Friday, October 26th between 8am and 5pm. This circuit move will cause an interruption in Qwest DSL service. This maintenance will not affect regular Dial-up service or Verizon DSL lines. Only Qwest DSL lines will be affected. The disruption to any single Qwest DSL line should last for no longer than 30 minutes sometime during the maintenance window.
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The circuits that serve QWEST DSL connections are being changed during a 48 hour window, starting October 18th, at 8:00AM PDT.UPDATE: Qwest has notified us that this procedure will not occur today as scheduled.
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Avvanta will be performing emergency maintenance on equipment serving your Internet connectivity tonight, Tuesday, October 2nd, between 12:01 am to 12:30 am PDT. Avvanta administrators expect several brief outages of connectivity during this period as technicians replace equipment and network cables. During this time you should expect disruptions in connectivity. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused during this maintenance.
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Late yesterday some packet loss developed on one of the moved circuits. That packet loss resulted in DHCP timeouts for many customers, especially Verizon connections. The problem has been resolved however some Verizon DSL modems did not succeed in re-establishing their connection after the problem was fixed.
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Although the entire move and turn-up took slightly longer than expected, all servers and services were fully operational and functioning normally by 7am local time. If you experience any difficulties please contact Technical Support, and thank you for your patience.
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Avvanta's data center & service equipment is being moved to a new facility Sunday, September 30th, from 12:01AM to 6:00AM. This move is being done to strengthen service levels and to ensure better service quality. The new datacenter has full generator backup and increased air conditioning to ensure better reliability during the coming winter storms. During this period you will experience disruption in your Internet services.
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We have been having continuing problems with our primary storage array. Many customers and web sites have been migrated off of the problematic array, but not all of them. Tonight at about 8pm we experienced another failure. Administrators are working on the problem and will have it resolved as quickly as possible. Email and some personal web pages will be offline until the problem is resolved. 7:27am, July 31st Technicians have been working through the night to replace the failing storage array. Data is being loaded onto the new array currently. Until that restoration is complete, email services will be unavailable. We anticipate having the restoration completed by mid-morning. 4:35pm, July 31st About 70 percent of the migration to the storage array has been completed. Mail is now once again fully functional for both sending out mail and for receiving incoming email. For some customers, mail that was delivered prior to 8pm last night may not appear until our recovery has been completed. The ongoing recovery also affects email folders and messages left in your Inbox. These messages and the contents of your home directories will be restored over the next few hours. Thank you for your patience as we worked through this issue. |
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Sunday afternoon at about 2pm, another drive failed in the same storage array as on Friday. The failure was not as severe as on Friday. The storage array was able to be repaired and back online within a few hours. The data is still being rebuilt and checked, so email and web pages served from our system will be a bit slow until about 3am Monday morning. |
At around 10:00am Friday, July 27th the main storage array suffered a drive failure. The array began rebuilding that failed drive using the ready spare when that backup drive also failed. Normally a drive rebuild occurs "live" while the system is in general use with minimal impact on normal operations. With multiple drive failures however we had no choice but to take the entire array offline to physically replace the damaged drives and perform a clean restoration of approximately one terrabyte of data.
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A drive failed within the storage array used by the CCC. No data or mail was lost as a result. The system has built-in replacement drives within the array for just such an event, however, the system must now rebuild the data from the failed drive. The rebuild process should take approximately 6 hours. During this time the CCC will respond slower than normal and may experience timeouts or similar errors and we apologize for the inconvenience.
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On Friday, June 22 2007 between 12:01am and 5:00am Pacific our aggregate DSL circuit carrier will be performing maintenance work. The maintenance will affect Qwest DSL customers residing in and around Phoenix Arizona. All other connections, servers and services will be unaffected. The affected circuits should be down for no more than 15 minutes during this maintenance window. |
| We're pleased to announce the rollout of Avvanta vVoice, our in-house VoIP solution. Voice over IP is a cost effective alternative to traditional phone lines. By utilizing existing internet technology, and combining freshly developed integration software, we can now bring all levels of communication home to you. Get free setup and two months of vVoice Unlimited for only $10 a month! 3-Way Calling, Caller ID, Call Forwarding, Call History, Call Waiting, and Voicemail included in all plans! Call and talk to one of our VoIP Specialists today! 425-818-6500
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Free setup and up to three months free! For all new Avvanta subscribers that order any of Avvanta's Qwest Basic DSL or Qwest Standard DSL accounts the normal $10.00 setup fee will be waived and up to three months of free service. For every month that you pre-pay, up to three months, Avvanta will give you an equal number of months for free! This promotion is effective for all new Avvanta Qwest Basic DSL or Qwest Standard DSL accounts created between March 20th, 2007 and May 31st, 2007. Call 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to order your Qwest DSL service and create your Avvanta account.
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL service between February 18th 2007 and May 19th 2007 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be waived. Promotion Extension: Qwest has extended their 1st Quarter promotion indefinitely (at least through the end of the 3rd Quarter ending late November) For residential customers the monthly rate for new Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5Mbps) customers is reduced from $28.00/month to $22.00/month for the first twelve months of service. ($20.00/month for AZ and NE residents) Price for Life: Due to the overwhelming success of this promotion Qwest has extended and improved the Price for Life promo! With a two year commitment the promotional price of $22.00/month ($20.00/month in AZ and NE) never expires. The customer will only lose the discount if they change their services (terminate DSL service, change ISPs, change speeds, or switch to Standalone service) Qwest will impose a $200 early termination fee if any of the above occurs within the first two years. This promotion applies to New and Upgrading, non-standalone service only. Qwest is currently offering other promotions in addition to the waived activation fees and reduced monthly rates. Read the full announcement for complete details.
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The nature of the destruction that devastated the Pacific Northwest caused most of our emergency measures to either be inadequate or irreparably damaged. The hurricane force winds downed many power lines and trees and caused flying debris to become missiles upon impact. In response to the damage to our network, and our customers faith, we are implementing new measures that can withstand what mother nature has recently thrown at our communities and livelihoods. A plan, which was initiated months ago, to create a second NOC at a different geographical location would have prevented this recent outage. Due to various causes the new NOC will not be ready for turn-up until this week. Additionally many customers have voiced concerns over not being able to reach our offices via phone for an update. We will be installing a land-line status number to enable a better communication network for our customers. While we recover from this calamity, and unroll the new services we've been preparing, updates will be made to the main web site. If you have concerns please contact us via email (support@avvanta.com) or call (425.818.6500). Call volume will be heavy for the first 24 to 48 hours. Marc Lewis
President
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Due to the ice and snow closing major roads and hazardous driving conditions our call center has been closed for the day (Tuesday, Nov 28). Support is available via email and we regret any inconvenience this may cause.
Update: The call center will most likely remain closed through Wed, Nov 29 and we expect to return to normal operations Thursday, Nov 30th. |
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At 7:26 this morning the Qwest ATM switch (STTLWALADS0) servicing most of the Lakeview, Seattle area went down. This is preventing DSL service to all or major portions of the 98115 zip code including the following service numbers: Area code (206) Prefixes: 517, 522, 523, 524, 525, 526, 527, 528, 529, 729, 985, 987. We do not yet have an estimated time of repair from Qwest regarding this outage. Outage cleared at 11:03am |
Over the last 24 hours Avvanta's Advanced Spam Protection filters have been updated to the latest version of our filtering engine. Using the last 30 days of filter activity we've also added some refinements to the tests the ASP filters use to determine spam from legitimate email. Translated this means that the filters should be much more effective at identifying spam.
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The Landrush period for the newest top-level domain, .mobi, has begun. Registrations for .mobi domains during the Landrush period are $35 annually with a 2 year minimum. Got a great name picked out? Register it now! Note that there are very important restrictions to the usage of .mobi domains which must be considered before registering.
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| When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL service between July 16th 2006 and October 14th 2006 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be waived. For residential customers the monthly rate for new Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5Mbps) customers is reduced from $28.00/month to $22.00/month ($17.00/month in AZ and NE) for the first twelve months of service. Price for Life: With a two year commitment the promotional price of $22.00/month ($17.00/month in AZ and NE) never expires. The customer will only lose the discount if they terminate DSL service, change ISPs, change speeds, or switch to Standalone service. Qwest will impose a $200 early termination fee if any of the above occurs within the first two years. This promotion applies to New, non-standalone service only. Qwest is currently offering other promotions in addition to the waived activation fees and reduced monthly rates. Read the full announcement for complete details.
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Aug 2: The majority of Verizon circuits have been restored to service. If your service is not yet operational, and you have not already contacted us or been contacted by us, please call or email our office for an update. Billing: As a reminder, all Verizon customers have their August DSL billing waived. As the resolution of this issue took until after the first of the month you may have received a statement with August charges on it. If so, please call our office to confirm the reversal of these charges from your account.
Special Billing Note: Verizon customers would have received an email from us earlier this year announcing our new Wholesale affiliation with Verizon. As a wholesale partner your DSL service is now consolidated into a single lower monthly bill from us rather than the split fees of the old retail service. (ie, a Verizon DSL signaling fee on your monthly phone bill, plus a separate fee from us each month for the internet access) Now you will receive only one bill from us - with no Verizon DSL signaling fee on your phone bill. What does this mean? Your bill from us each month will have gone up, but the removal of the Verizon signaling fee means the combined total you will be spending each month has gone down by as much as 50%! For complete details see the package pricing in our Verizon Services section and if you have any questions, please let us know. |
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At 7:50am PDT, on July 22nd, 2006 there was a fiber cut in Moses Lake, WA. This cut is causing Avvanta DSL customers in eastern Washington to be without service. The circuits are being repaired and service will be restored as quickly as possible. Update: As of July 22nd at 11:04am PDT, this fiber cut has been repaired and service has been restored to all customers. |
| Qwest is currently experiencing a service outage in Colorado effecting the majority of Colorado customers. An estimated time of repair is not currently available however Qwest is aware of the problem and has engineers working to restore service as quickly as possible. |
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Between about 8:30am and 9:50am (Pacific time), there was a service disruption for many Verizon customers in Western Washington when one of Avvanta's DS3 circuits stopped receiving traffic from Verizon. The problem was resolved at about 9:50am. If you are still unable to access the Internet, you should turn off your computer, turn off any DSL router's you may have, then turn off your modem. Wait for 60 seconds and then power your DSL modem back on, wait for 30 seconds, then turn the power back on for your DSL router and your computer. If you are still experiencing connectivity issues, please call our office at 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274. |
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Beginning at about 7:00am Pacific time, Global Crossing, one of Avvanta's upstream connections to the Internet, has been experiencing large outages in California. A large number of sites use this path for access and has been causing some sites to be unreachable sporadically. Many sites have been routed around the affected routers, both by Global and by Avvanta using alternative routes. Global Crossing is aware of the issue and is working to restore service to full capacity.
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Global Crossing, one of Avvanta's upstream connections to the Internet, has had a large group fiber cut between Seattle and Portland. This cut happened at about 7:54am Pacific time. This outage has long reaching effects and has had an impact on Qwest and MCI circuits as well. Some Avvanta DSL subscribers went down this morning shortly after the outage began and were offline for between one and two hours. It has also caused slowdowns through our Global Crossing Internet connection. Qwest and MCI are currently re-splicing all fiber pairs that are down. They are estimating that the problems will be resolved today, May 20th. Update: As of Saturday, May 21st at about 8pm Pacific time, Global Crossing circuits have been repaired and circuits are functioning normally again. |
Yet more domain slamming games going on. The newest would-be domain slammer is a company calling itself the Official Internet Registry & Optimization Bureau The only thing official about them is the fact that it's a scam.
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL service between April 30th, 2006 and July 15th, 2006 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be waived. For residential customers the monthly rate for new Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe customers is reduced from $28.00/month to $22.00/month ($17.00/month in AZ and NM) for the first twelve months of service. For new residential Qwest Choice DSL Premiere customers in all states the monthly rate is reduced from $38.00/month to $25.00/month for the first twelve months of service. Qwest is currently offering other promotions in addition to the waived activation fees and reduced monthly rates. Read the full announcement for complete details.
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First and foremost, we have not been purchased or merged with another company. After nearly 12 years Blarg has changed its name and is now Avvanta Communications Corporation. Avvanta is the same company, run by the same people with the same philosphy of bringing the best and most reliable internet solutions to our customers, we're just going to do that with a new name. Since many people will have questions about this change, we've compiled a list of questions and answers about it. If you have any questions that aren't covered here give us a call at 425.818.6500 (888.662.5274 toll free) or send an email to Avvanta Support and we'll be happy, as always, to answer them.
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Version v5.2 of Avvanta's Communications Control Center has been released at www.avvantamail.com. The CCC has an all new look to go with our new name. Included with that new look are several new features and numerous improvements in functionality. Some of the major points of this release:
- An all new message display system. The CCC can now display messages that include attachments with embedded messages.
- Greylisting has been added to our Advanced Spam Protection.
- A new WYSIWYG editor. While still experimental, it is fully functional and gives word-processor like capabilities when composing email. It can be activated from the CCC's Preferences section.
- Leaving the compose message screen before sending a message now requires confirmation
- Better message formatting when forwarding and replying to messages
- Numerous other minor functionality and speed improvements
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The arms race between the spammers and the spam filters continues with a behind-the-scenes update to our Advanced Spam Protection. Those with Advanced Spam Protection enabled should see a decrease in the amount of spam that gets through to your Inbox. Protect your email and read more!
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Over the last week Verizon's internal network has been experiencing difficulties. Symptoms include poor throughput and low to moderate packet loss on some Verizon DSL circuits. Updated April 7, 2006
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On Sunday between 2:05pm and 2:25pm PST, one of our DSL routers came under a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The exact type attack and the specific target is being investigated. We will be monitoring the network closely watching for future attacks and making any necessary adjustments to our routers to prevent this sort of attack in the future. This attack affected only Qwest and Verizon DSL customers in Western WA. No other services were impacted.
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k), Standalone Qwest DSL (1.5M/896k), DSL Premier (7M/896K) or Standalone Qwest DSL Premier (7M/896K) service between January 29th, 2006 and April 7th, 2006 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be waived. The monthly rate for new Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe customers is reduced to $25.00 ($20.00 in AZ and NM) for the first twelve months of service. For new Qwest Choice DSL Premiere customers in all states, the monthly rate is reduced to $28.00 for the first twelve months of service. Qwest is currently offering other promotions in addition to the waived activation fees and reduced monthly rates. Read the full announcement for complete details.
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Registrar "slamming" is a term used to describe the fraudulent act of convincing the owner of a domain name to "renew" their domain registration. While the act of renewal itself is not fraudulent, the perpetrators do not adequately disclose the fact that the "renewal" is actually a Registrar Transfer. If you are the owner of a domain name be aware of the following tactics which may be used to trick you.
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Today at approximately 10:15am our mail system came under attack from a spammer's unsuccessful attempts to use our network to send out their spam to the Internet. The impact on several of our mail servers rendered these servers extremely slow for about 20 minutes as they rejected the tens of thousands of messages they were attempting to send. During this time our redundant servers were taking the entire mail load causing insignificant mail slowdowns and no disruptions in service. This spammer was blocked access to our network at approximately 10:35am and mail services returned to normal at this time. |
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We are pleased to announce that we have expanded our Qwest DSL coverage area. Avvanta now services all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona for Qwest DSL. For more information on our various Qwest DSL offerings, see our complete list of Services. To order service call our office at 888.662.5274 or Signup Now using our secure ordering system. |
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k), Standalone Qwest DSL (1.5M/896k), DSL Premier (7M/896K) or Standalone Qwest DSL Premier (7M/896K) service between October 9th, 2005 and January 8th, 2006 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be waived. Existing customers changing their service from Qwest Choice DSL, Qwest DSL 640K to Qwest DSL Deluxe or Qwest DSL Premier the normal $9.99 change fee will be waived. Qwest is currently offering other promotions in addition to the waived activation fees. Read the full announcement for complete details.
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Updated: The server relocations have been completed and all servers and services are back in operation at our new network facility. There were two unanticipated problems. One of the border routers went down during the procedure taking with it a number of DSL connections and scrambling the routes for those who remained online. In addition the tertiary name server that was to provide DNS while the main servers were moved had a partial failure. All of these issues have been resolved. We thank you very much for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience. |
On Thursday, September 8th, Verizon DSL subscribers will be transitioned from our current network center to our new facilities. These migrations start at 10am and will be completed by 4pm. There will be a brief interruption in service when a DSL connection is moved. This interruption should last no more than a few minutes.
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Beginning on Tuesday, August 30th, Qwest DSL subscribers will be transitioned from our current network center to our new facilities. Qwest will start the migrations at 10am and end by 5pm. There will be a brief interruption in service when a DSL connection is moved. This interruption should last no more than a few minutes. These migrations will continue through Thursday September 1st.
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On Friday, July 29th, 2005, Avvanta is moving its support center. The move will begin at 2:30pm, at which time we will be unavailable for telephone support until Monday morning at 9am. We will monitor support email over the weekend as normal. This will not cause any disruption in any service. Only telephone sales and support will be unavailable.
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k), Standalone DSL (1.5M/896k), DSL Premier (7M/896K) or Standalone DSL Premier (7M/896K) service between July 10th, 2005 and October 9th, 2005 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be waived. Existing customers changing their service from Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest DSL 640K (640k/256k) or from Qwest Standalone DSL (1.5M/896k) to Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k) the normal $9.99 change fee will be waived. Qwest is currently offering many more promotions in addition to the waived activation fees. Read the full article for complete details.
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3:20pm - A localized power failure has disrupted phone service to our Technical Support Center. Calls to our Technical Support lines will return a busy signal or an "Unable to complete your call" error message until the problem is resolved. All other Avvanta servers and services are performing normally. Only our Call Center is being affected. At this time no estimated time of repair is available. If you are unable to contact us this afternoon or evening remember that our Call Center is open 10am to 2pm on Saturdays. Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience.
5:32pm - Phone service has been restored. |
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Starting on May 3rd, 2005, Qwest is offering a new DSL line called Qwest DSL Premier and Qwest Standalone DSL Premier. These new lines run at the highest speed that the phone line is capable of up to 7168Kbps down by 896Kbps up1. Avvanta has introduced our new eXtreme DSL services that are designed to work with the new DSL Premier services. |
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All new Avvanta subscribers ordering any of Avvanta's Qwest Basic DSL or Qwest Standard DSL accounts the normal $10.00 setup fee will be waived and the first month of service will be free. This promotion is effective for all new Avvanta Qwest Basic DSL or Qwest Standard DSL accounts created between May 1st, 2005 and June 30th, 2005. Call 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to order your Qwest DSL service and create your Avvanta account.
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During the early morning hours of Tuesday April 26th Qwest suffered a very brief area-wide service interruption. The outage appears to have lasted approximately 35-40 minutes and disrupted service throughout the region. Most, but not all DSL modems reconnected automatically once Qwest restored service. Those that did not recover will need to be powercycled to restore service. Unplug your DSL modem, leave it unplugged for 15 seconds, then plug it back in. DSL service should be restored within one minute of powercycling the modem. If service does not recover please call our office. |
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k), or Standalone DSL (1.5M/896k) service between April 10th, 2005 and July 9th, 2005 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will waived. In addition, new Choice DSL Deluxe customers or customers upgrading from Qwest Choice DSL to Qwest DSL Deluxe will recieve the first two months of Qwest Choice DSL service for $19.99 (normally $28.00). Existing customers changing their service from Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest DSL 640K (640k/256k) or from Qwest Standalone DSL (1.5M/896k) to Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k) the normal $9.99 change fee will be waived. |
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Effective March 1st, we have added additional service offerings for Qwest DSL Subcribers. Our new Qwest Basic DSL services are inexpensive connectivity only accounts. These Qwest Basic DSL accounts include a single dynamic IP address, a single mailbox and unmetered transfer. A complete listing of our DSL Services can be found in the Services section. To qualify your line and order Qwest DSL Service call us at 425.818.6500 or toll free at 1.888.662.5274.
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Jabber is an open, secure and ad-free alternative to consumer IM services. Avvanta's Jabber service is connected to the global Jabber network and it can be used to communicate with any of the thousands of people throughout the world connected into the Jabber network. All Avvanta accounts include access to this new service and does not require any special activation procedures or different passwords. It uses your existing account information that you are already using for your email, DSL, dialup or other account settings. Setup Guides and server information can be found in the Jabber Instant Messaging section.
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All new Avvanta subscribers ordering any of Avvanta's Qwest Standard DSL accounts the normal $10.00 setup fee will be waived and the first three months of service will be just $9.95/month. This promotion is effective for all new Avvanta Qwest Standard DSL accounts created between January 11th, 2005 and February 28th, 2005. Call 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to order your Qwest DSL service and create your Avvanta account.
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k), or Standalone DSL (1.5M/896k) service between January 9th, 2005 and April 9th, 2005 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be only $10.00. Existing customers changing their service from Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest DSL 640K (640k/256k) or from Qwest Standalone DSL (1.5M/896k) to Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5M/896k) the normal $9.99 change fee will be waived. |
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| Between the hours of about 10:30am and 4:15pm on January 1st, we were experiencing problems with our mail and web hosting systems as a result of issues with our upgrades on December 31st. These problems have been resolved and all systems are fully functional. Our network administration staff will continue to monitor the system closely throughout the weekend to ensure that all systems continue to operate normally and reliably. Thank you for your patience and understanding. As of 4:15pm, January 1st, 2005, all services are back online. |
On Friday, December 31st, 2004, starting at 12:00 Noon, we will be upgrading our network. This upgrade will take approximately two hours to complete. During this time all email services will be unavailable and there will be brief interruptions in all web services. Mail that arrives during the upgrades will be stored and delivered when the upgrades have been completed.
Update 2:12pm: Maintenance completed and all services are up and functioning normally. Have a Happy New Year!
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Recent reports of an ICANN Registrar Transfer policy change have resulted in some concerns over "domain hijacking". Like many other Registration Service Providers we do not believe the policy change will result in wholesale hijacking of domain names from their rightful registrants. The change however creates the possibility that it could happen even if on a limited scale. As a result we have decided to err on the side of caution and have placed a Registrar Lock on all domains registered through Avvanta via OpenSRS to prevent any hijacking from occuring.
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL (256k/256k), Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe (1.5Mb/896k), or Standalone DSL (1.5Mb/896k) service between October 22nd 2004 and January 8th, 2005 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be only $9.99. |
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One of the DS3 circuits that connects Qwest DSL subscribers into Avvanta's network was down. Qwest technicians have been working on the problem, and as of about 10:10am, October 25th, they are still working on the problem. Update, 11:39am
Qwest and Avvanta technicians are continuing to work on the problem. Some customers are able to get online by power cycling their DSL modem. We will continue to work with Qwest until this problem is resolved. Update 12:56pm
The DS3 outage has been resolved and there should be no connection issues. |
The first trojan-laden jpeg images designed to exploit the Microsoft GDI+JPEG vulnerability were seen propagating via Usenet newsgroup posts today. Although not itself a significant risk the existence of these trojan horse infected images indicate that it will not be much longer before a self-propagating worm/virus designed to exploit this vulnerability begins to spread via email.
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Version v4.4 of Avvanta's Communications Control Center has been released at www.avvantamail.com. This new version is focused primarily on composing new messages. Some of the major points of this release:
- The CCC now includes Spell Checking
- Cancelling a message now requires confirmation
- Improved layout on the compose window
- Other minor functionality improvements and updates
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On August 1st, we increased the storage space for all customers from 25MB to 50MB. There were no changes in account prices from this change. On Friday, August 13th, we will be updating the main Avvanta web server. This is a two fold update:
- www.avvanta.com is getting a new look and new content
- All personal sites are on a new web server with a new URL
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Qwest has released an updated firmware for the ActionTec GT701 Wireless Gateway. This firmware update fixes many known bugs in the ActionTec device. This is not a required update and should only be installed if you are experiencing problems with your Qwest-provided ActionTec GT701. |
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Yet another variant of the MyDoom worm is making the rounds. It claims to be from Avvanta support with an attached notice. Reminder: Avvanta will never send an attachment of any kind to your email address. If you ever receive an email claiming to be from Avvanta administration with an attachment do not open that attachment.
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Qwest has notified us of emergency maintenance on one of their Central Office facilities. This service will be conducted between 6am and 8am tomorrow, Friday July 2nd. |
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Version v4.3 of Avvanta's Communications Control Center has been released at www.avvantamail.com. This new version includes numerous enhancements including:
- A new welcome and login page that includes the most recent announcements from the main Avvanta web site
- A new theme with new colors and a cleaner look
- File management for manipulating files and folders in your home directory
- Address book importing and exporting for most popular email clients
- Many other minor functionality improvements and updates
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All new Avvanta DSL customers get the first month of service for free and all Avvanta DSL setup fees waived. This promotion is effective for all new Avvanta DSL accounts created between June 1st, 2004 and June 30th, 2004. Call 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to order DSL service and create your Avvanta account. |
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL or Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe service between May 29th, 2004 and July 30th, 2004 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be only $0.99. The normal DSL speed change fee of $9.99 is being reduced to $0.01. |
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10:30am Several power outages during this mornings storm have resulted in the failure of our Technical Support phone lines. Calls to our Technical Support lines will return a busy signal until the problem is resolved. All other Avvanta servers and services are performing normally. Only our Call Center is currently affected. Repairs are being conducted and the Technical Support lines will be available again as soon as possible.
12:45pm - All Technical Support lines are again working properly. Thank you for your patience. |
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The W32/Sasser worm has been updated by Trend Micro and is now considered a High Risk threat to unpatched Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT machines. Unlike other recent worms this worm does not spread via email. |
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On Friday, March 5th, 2004, between 3am and 4am, Qwest will be performing routine maintenance on some of our DS3 and OC3 circuits that provide connectivity for our DSL subscribers. This maintenance will result in a short period of downtime for Qwest and Verizon DSL subscribers. Qwest anticipates less than 5 minutes per circuit, with a maximum down time of about 30 minutes. |
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The newest worm making the rounds is W32/Bagle.J. This worm spoofs the "From" address to be from an administrative role account at your domain name. For example, users of Avvanta.com are receiving messages claiming to be "From" management@avvanta.com, staff@avvanta.com etc claiming that your email account will be inactive or that the servers will be unavailable. This is of course, not true. |
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Starting on February 28th, 2004, customers in Qwest's service areas will be able to purchase Standalone DSL service from Qwest. This new Standalone DSL product does not require normal telephone service or a phone number from Qwest. The new service runs at up to 1.5M down by 896K up1. It will be available from Qwest for $33.00 per month2 with a one time installation fee of $99.003. The Avvanta services available for these new lines are our Qwest Standard DSL, Qwest SOHOxl DSL and Qwest SOHOxs DSL Internet service packages. |
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Effective February 1st, 2004, we have reduced our monthly pricing for all Qwest and Verizon DSL subscribers. We have also added to our service options with our new SOHOxl service for both Qwest SOHOxl DSL and Verizon SOHOxl DSL subscribers. The new SOHOxl service is ideal for small businesses and individuals wanting to run low traffic servers using their DSL line. A complete list of all of our DSL offerings can be found in the Services section. To change your service or to place a new order, call our office at 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274. |
Effective February 7th, 2004, Qwest has renamed their most popular DSL Serivce offerings and added a new speed.| Old Service Name | New Service Name | Maximum Speed
(Down/Up)1 | Qwest Monthly2 | | Qwest Choice DSL 256K | Qwest Choice DSL | 256K/256K | $15.00 | | Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe | Qwest DSL 640K | 640K/256K | $28.00 | | N/A (New Service) | Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe | 1.5M/896K | $28.00 |
Avvanta offers services that correspond with each of these lines, including our Qwest Standard DSL, Qwest SOHOxs DSL and our new Qwest SOHOxl DSL service. |
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On Tuesday, February 3rd, 2004 beginning at approximately 7am, Qwest will be performing maintenance on the central office that our DSL circuits are connected to. Qwest is anticipating between a 5 and 15 minute outage for all DSL subscribers some time between 7am and 8am.
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When ordering new Qwest Choice DSL 256K or Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe service between December 13, 2003 and February 27th, 2004 the normal $99.00 Qwest DSL activation fee will be waived. |
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Effective December 15th, 2003, Qwest has new names and reduced pricing for their most popular DSL service offerings.| Old Service Name | New Service Name | Old Price | New Price | | Qwest DSL 256K | Qwest Choice DSL 256 | $21.95/mo | $15.00/mo | | Qwest DSL Deluxe | Qwest Choice DSL Deluxe | $31.95/mo | $28.00/mo |
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All new DSL customers get the first month of Avvanta service for free and all Avvanta DSL setup fees waived. This promotion is effective for all new Avvanta DSL accounts created between October 1st, 2003 and December 31st, 2003. Call 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to order DSL service and create your account. |
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When ordering new Qwest DSL service between September 27th, 2003 and October 24th, 2003 the following promotions will be applied to your Qwest order:
Qwest DSL 256K and Deluxe Lines:- $50.00 activation fee (normally $99.00)
- $2.00 modem rental for 12 months (normally $5.00/month)
Qwest DSL Pro Lines:- Free Activation (normally $99)
- $2.00 modem rental for 12 months (normally $5.00/month)
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Monday evening beginning shortly after 7:30pm Avvanta's border routers suffered a Denial of Service attack which lasted approximately 80 minutes. During this period internal services were unaffected however connections to external networks were severely degraded. Update: Tue, Sep 9, 2003, 6:15p. There were a few additional outages today, all of them were remedied within a few minutes. Our administrators, working together with Cisco, have identified the cause of the outages and have adjusted our router configurations to prevent further outages. Our administrators will continue to monitor things very closely to ensure uninterrupted service. |
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A virulent email worm began spreading earlier this week named Sobig.F. On Friday, August 22nd Avvanta Online Services began filtering for this virus on all of our incoming mail servers. Filtering however is not a guarantee of safety. You are encouraged to install and/or update your Anti Virus Software to innoculate themselves from the threat of this worm.
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On Monday August 11th a worm that exploits the Windows DCOM RPC vulnerability began to quickly spread over the internet. Unlike other recent worms, this worm does not spread via E-Mail. If you are running a vulnerable version of the Windows Operating System and connect to the internet you are vulnerable to infection. The Microsoft Advisory for this vulnerability is MS03-026. |
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On Friday, July 4th, 2003 beginning at approximately 2pm, we will be replacing and upgrading one of our primary servers. The upgrade should take 30 minutes to complete. |
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All new DSL customers get the first two months of Avvanta service for free and all Avvanta DSL setup fees waived. This promotion is effective for all new Avvanta DSL accounts created between April 1st, 2003 and June 30th, 2003. Call 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to order DSL service and create your account. |
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When ordering new Qwest DSL service between March 29th, 2003 and July 15th, 2003 the following promotions will be applied to your Qwest order: Qwest DSL 256K and Deluxe Lines:
- $25 activation fee (normally $99)
- First month of service free
- If service is installed on a business line, the first 6 months of modem rental are free ($30 savings)
Qwest DSL Pro Lines:
- Free Activation (normally $99)
- First month of service free
- First 6 months of modem rental are free ($30.00 savings)
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On Saturday, March 15th, 2003 starting at 9am we will be performing some routine maintenance on some of our DSL routers. This maintenance will result in a short period of downtime for some Qwest and Verizon DSL subscribers. We do not expect the outage to be more than about 30 minutes. |
We have a new mailing address, effective February 1st. All written correspondence and payments should now be mailed to:
Avvanta Communications Corporation
PO Box 1827
Bellevue, WA 98009-1827
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On Wednesday, February 5th, 2003 at 7am, we will begin upgrading our dial-up modem pools to the new v.92 standard. |
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On Friday, December 20th at 9am, we will be changing our Usenet News service provider to Supernews. This switch to Supernews is being made to provide more consistent service, higher completion rates and fewer missing articles. |
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We are happy to report that on December 12th, we have completed the installation and activation of a new DS3 circuit to Cable & Wireless for additional Internet backbone connectivity. |
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Qwest has extended their promotions for new Qwest DSL 256K and DSL Deluxe line orders. When ordering new Qwest DSL 256K or Qwest DSL Deluxe service before January 5th, 2003 the following promotions are available:
- Free Activation (normally $99.00)
- One year of free ActionTec DSL router or Intel DSL modem rental (normally $5.00/month)*
These lines are compatible with our Qwest Standard DSL and our Qwest SOHOxs DSL.Contact Information if you would like to place an order or have additional questions.
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Up to $30.00 credit applied to account setup fee and first month. To be eligible for this promotion your Avvanta account must be created between 10/01/02 through 12/31/02. Take an additional $10.00 off your first bill by setting your account up on automatic credit card withdrawal. Call 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to create your account. |
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When ordering new Qwest DSL 256K or Qwest DSL Deluxe service between August 31st, 2002 and November 29th, 2002 the following promotions are available:
- Free Activation (normally $99.00)
- One year of free ActionTec DSL router or Intel DSL modem rental (normally $5.00/month)*
Call us at 425.818.6500 or toll free at 888.662.5274 to qualify your line and place your Qwest DSL order. |
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At 7:57am today, October 15th, one of the DS3's connecting the Avvanta network to the Internet went down and is still down. The problem was reported to the carrier at about 8:15am for repair. Traffic was automatically re-routed through alternate connections, but we are currently running at reduced capacity. This problem will be resolved as quickly as possible. Update: As of 9:55am the circuit is back online and we are now running at full capacity again. |
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Qwest has announced their promotions for new Qwest DSL 256K and DSL Deluxe line orders. When ordering new service between July 4th and August 30th, 2002, DSL 256K and DSL Deluxe customers get the following promotion:
- First month of service at no charge
- $50 rebate after 45 days of service
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Qwest has announced their promotions for new Qwest Pro DSL line orders. When ordering between August 6 and September 27, 2002, DSL Pro customers get the following promotion:
- First month of service at no charge
- Activation fee waived
- First 12 months of modem rental waived
- Technician installation is included (regularly $149.95)
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There was a Qwest DS3 outage that affected Qwest and Verizon customers that lasted about 1 hour and 40 minutes beginning at about 10:10pm on August 8th. The outage first manifested itself with slow connection speeds and packet loss, and at about 11:25pm we rebooted the router that was having problems. As of 11:50pm, the problem has been resolved and all is back to normal again. |
Today we released the new Avvanta site. The new site was designed to enable visitors to find answers quickly on the large selection of services and support guides we offer.
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