[Freelists News] A month of change
- From: John Madden <weez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freelists-news@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 20:18:25 -0500
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This month will be a turbulent one for FreeLists. But that's about the
worst that can be said about it.
Our 1-year contract with our current ISP will be up this summer, and given
some QoS issues and poor customer service in dealing with the problem,
we'll be canceling that contract at the end of February. Given the growth
of FreeLists, especially in the past 6 months, it will soon be time to
move to a larger-capacity network anyway, so this seems like the right
time to make that move.
Here are our current plans: on February 18th, we'll be establishing new
network connectivity and space in a new data center. That week, the
network, power, and climate control will be tested. On Saturday morning,
February 23rd, we'll take down and move all FreeLists servers from the
current network to the new one. That process will only take about an
hour. However, given the nature of the DNS system and the fact that we
have to change our IP addresses, there will be a longer service outage
that will vary for some people depending on your ISP's DNS configuration.
For some, the change will be immediate; for others, it might take a day or
so; the worst we've seen is Verizon, which stored invalid DNS data for a
week.
It's unfortunate that this move has to be made, but it will be better for
FreeLists in the long run. We're entering into a 3-year contract, so we
won't be making another move like this for a long time. Since we're
making this change on a weekend, fewer people will be affected, and
hopefully everything will be straightened out for most by Monday, February
25th.
FreeLists has had ISP changes before though, so what really makes this a
"month of change?" Well, with more-premium-than-we've-got-now net access
comes a larger ISP bill -- one that's 3 times larger than what we're
paying on our current contract. Sure, FreeLists is a hobby for all of us,
but that cost simply isn't feasible. To produce an income to offset
network costs, we'll be setting up a parallel internet services venture
which will become FreeLists' parent company. More details on that parent
company will be toward the end of this month.
Before anyone gets out their flame cannon, please let me I stress this
one, very important point: FreeLists and the services it provides will not
be: changing for the worse (although probably for the better),
commercializing, spamming, selling advertisements, selling out, selling
email addresses, working the corner, or bought by Microsoft. The service
hundreds of thousands of people across the globe have come to depend on as
the best mailing list service available isn't going anywhere.
To re-cap:
- FreeLists will be moved and down for a bit on Saturday, February 23rd.
The actual outage will only be about an hour, but some may experience
trouble for a couple of days.
- New network costs will force us to make money by setting up an company
on the side.
- The sky will not fall.
Questions, concerns, and comments are, of course, always welcome.
John
- FreeLists Staff
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