Back to back, after the problems yesterday, a core Cisco router failed.  This is a unit we have been trying to get decommissioned since mid-summer but the process has taken far longer than expected. The switch up and died on us, resulting in fiber and DSL service in Verizon territory being knocked offline for about three hours, and one fiber customer in Bellingham also affected. Mount Vernon services are still operating on a backup unit and we will be migrating services there to our newer (and redundant) equipment over either the long x-mas or New Year's weekends.

After this last weekend, it became increasingly apparent the need for a diesel or gasoline generator in order for us to be able to provide top notch service. Our budget for these kinds of things remains small, but Fairhaven Light & Ether up in Bellingham worked with us to find a solution. We now have a 4000VA generator. Our battery UPS systems utilize 3000VA, and critical equipment needs to keep all Internet services running are about 1500VA. The generator failover is manual start, but with our 4-6 hour battery capacity, and pagers going off within 10-20 minutes of a problem, there should be no issues in regards to unplugging from the 'grid' and keeping services up for hours, days or weeks if necessary.

There have been a barrage of spam/virus emails being received that appear to be from Valley Internet, most with .zip attachments. They are NOT from us. Delete them.