Service to the Game Trail 2.4Ghz wireles network has been restored. One of the uplinks to that system was down for several hours this morning. About 30 customers were affected.

Thank you to everyone who called to report the problem! As always, please let us know right away if your service is not performing properly.

Margie & Joe

The extended elecricity outage and telephone service outage in Buena Vista resulted in Internet service being down for over 4 hours. We discovered that our new DS3 equipment draws much more power than we expected and therefore the power back-up was not adequate for the length of the outage. However, with telco services also down, more power backup still would not have allowed us to utilize our DS3 and T1 connections to the Internet until those services were restored.

Over the next few weeks we will be rearranging and upgrading our power back-up system! We apologize for any inconvenience this outage may have caused. Thank you for your patience while we waited for the power to be restored.

Margie & Joe

The move of all DSL customers to our DS3 is complete! As always, if you have any problems or questions, please give us a call right away.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this move. We want to thank Qwest for arranging to have employees available after hours so that we did not have outages during normal business hours. Thanks for your patience while we work to upgrade your service!

Margie & Joe

So, with the help of several companies including Front Range Internet, Advoda, Internap and Qwest, we were able to push the install date up to September 29. Even though several serious snags occurred along the way, the great people helping us just kept finding ways around the snags and kept pushing ahead. We'd like to send out a big THANK YOU to everyone who helped us accomplish the impossible. It seems that we may have just experienced the fastest DS3 install ever!

We especially want to thank the customers in the Buena Vista area for your patience and understanding about being down on Saturday while we worked through several complications in moving to the new circuit.

Thanks for being customers of MCW! We appreciate your business and will continue to work hard to provide you the best possible service.

Margie & Joe

We have been told that different problems were found on two different circuits which connect the MCW network to the Internet backbone. One was repaired by replacing a cross-connect at the local telco central office and that circuit was brought back online about 3PM giving us about half of the normal bandwidth to the Internet. We have not yet been given any information on what repaired the other problem circuit.

Thank you for your patience while we waited for our circuits to be repaired by the telco. We apologize for the frustration and inconvenience caused by this outage.

Margie & Joe

Our backbone provider is working with the telco's to determine where the circuit is broken. They have eliminated the possibility of a physical problem and believe they have narrowed it down to a Level 2 ATM Layer issue. We are calling them frequently requesting updates of any new info they can provide. We do not yet know if the problem is related to the fiber cut yesterday but we suspect it may be.

Internet, cell phone and long distance services have been restored. The outage was caused by a construction project in eastern Colorado which took out an overhead fiber line. It affected Buena Vista, Salida, Walsenburg, Trinidad, Alamosa, Del Norte and South Fork among other central Colorado towns.

It is our understanding that a fiber line was cut somewhere between Colorado Springs and Pueblo. This fiber cut is affecting towns in central and southeastern Colorado. It appears that all internet service, cell phone service, long distance service are down because of this fiber cut. We will update this page as we get more information.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you for your patience while we await the fiber repair between Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

There will be an outage of service of about 15 to 30 minutes during this time. Only users who connect to the Motorola 900MHz system in Game Trail will be affected.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience!

Margie & Joe

Fiber Cut in Central Colorado Repaired

Service to high-speed wireless customers was restored about 4:30AM this morning. DSL service came back up as well.

Service to MCW Dial-up customers and others routed through Salida was restored about 8:30AM.

Qwest is reporting that this widespread outage affecting Internet, telephone and long distance across central Colorado was caused by a fiber cut. A gas line crew cut and twisted the fiber carrying the OC48 over which most Internet and long distance services to the area run.

The fiber cut occurred just after 6:00PM Thursday evening. By 4:00AM Friday morning the cut had been located and repair had begun. Service was restored to MCW's T1's to Buena Vista about 4:30AM and we are told that other services in the area will continue to come up as more fiber strands are spliced. We are still waiting for our T1's to Salida to be repaired.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this outage. Thank you for your patience while we wait for the Qwest technicians to splice the fiber. As always, please do not hesitate to call when you have a problem or question.

Margie & Joe

Testing on the circuit connecting the MCW network to the Internet backbone was conducted overnight. Although no specific problems were identified, the circuit is now performing normally! It appears that when the telco technicians restarted the equipment which carries our circuit in order to test it, it cleared whatever problem was interfering with data transfer.

Because testing required shutting down the connection completely for up to 4 hours, we instructed our backbone provider to perform the tests between midnight and 4AM. However, our logs show that the circuit went down from 10PM to 2AM. We apologize for the early testing and any inconvenience caused by the performance and outage.

Thanks for your patience while we waited for the testing and repair.

Margie & Joe

Since exactly 8:00AM this morning our system has appeared to be overloaded. After thoroughly analyzing the MCW network and searching for the cause of the overload without success, we called our backbone provider to ask for a test of our circuit and routing. Their initial tests show that there may be a problem with our main connection to the Internet backbone.

In order to fully test and repair the circuit, they will need to take it down for about an hour and a half between midnight and 4AM. Customers will be able to get this web page and connect to the mail server. However, customers will not be able to access the Internet during the testing and repair. Any email sent during the outage will be delivered when the circuit is turned back up.

Thank you for your patience! We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these problems.

Margie & Joe

Early Morning Outages Repaired
Thursday, November 3, 2005

Game Trail wireless service was restored about 8:15AM. The outage lasted about 3 hours. It appeared to be the result of a combination of high winds and power outages early this morning.

Thank you for your patience while we worked to restore service. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this outage.

Margie & Joe

A technician on site at the Mt. Princeton antenna reports that service has been temporarily restored. It may go down intermittently as equipment is replaced. It appears that a large power surge blew out several surge protectors but they did their job and protected our equipment!

A technician is in route to the Mt. Princeton antenna site to determine the cause of the outage. It is affecting both MCW's wireless Internet sites as well as another company's pager service. It appears to be an extended power outage. However, Sangre de Cristo is not able to confirm that.

We will update this site as soon as we have any more information. Thank you for your patience. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this outage.

Margie & Joe

Moving mail to the new server went smoothly. There was an outage of mail service for about 20 minutes. The new server should be fully functional. As always, if you experience any problems, please give us a call right away.

Thanks for your patience while we worked to upgrade the server!

Margie & Joe

This morning we will be upgrading to a new mail server. This process will require that mail service be shut down for about 30 to 60 minutes while we sync data on the new server with the old server. Any mail coming in during that time will be delayed until the new server upgrade is complete. The outage will occur sometime Sunday morning.

Thank you for your patience while we work on this upgrade. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this outage.

Margie & Joe

Service has been restored to the Game Trail area after an overnight outage. Joe will be working on the system for about another hour, doing some wiring. So, the system may go down momentarily several times until about 9:15AM this morning.

Thank you to those who called and reported the problem. It is always helpful to have as much information as possible, as soon as possible.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this outage.

Margie & Joe

Thank you for your patience while we waited for the circuits to be repaired.

Margie & Joe

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we wait for the circuit to be repaired.

Margie & Joe

After replacing the second radio, the system is back up and running. The outage lasted about 2 hours. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thank you for your patience while we worked to repair the broken wireless link. As always, please do not hesitate to call if you have any questions or problems.

Margie and Joe

The antenna in Buena Vista which connects the Mt. Princeton system was blown off of its mount about 4:30PM. Service was restored at about 8:30PM.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we repaired the connection.

Margie & Joe

Thank you very much for your patience while we waited for the circuits to be repaired.

The outage has been isolated to a DS3 in Colorado Springs. Qwest has verified that the fiber facilities are in tact and has turned the repair back over to the backbone provider's technicians.

We have been informed that the Qwest DS3 which carries our DS1's from Buena Vista and Salida to Denver is down. A Qwest technician was dispatched to the central office. Although we were told that an estimated time of repair was not available, we expect that the outage should not last much longer.

Although we have not yet been provided with an explanation for the outage, we have been in contact with our Internet backbone provider several times and have been assured that Qwest is working on the problem. It appears to be affecting our DS1 circuits in Buena Vista and Salida.

Our backbone provider has determined that the circuit is down somewhere between Buena Vista and Denver. They have contacted the telco who will test remotely and then dispatch a technician.

The provider of our backbone connection to the Internet is checking on the circuits right now. We will update this page as soon as we have more information about the outage. We do not yet know if there was a fiber cut, if a router in Denver went down or if a Qwest circuit is the cause.

Thank you for your patience while we wait for the circuits to be repaired.

Margie & Joe

Qwest reports that they were able to do a temporary fix to get DSL in Buena Vista up and running again. The problem was determined to be the same piece of equipment which first failed on December 29th. They have dispatched a technician with a new interface card for the Qwest DSL DSLAM in Buena Vista. He is traveling from Colorado Springs and should be here within 2 hours or so.

There will be a brief outage while the technician replaces the interface card. We estimate that outage should last no more than 5 to 15 minutes.

Thank you for your patience during the outage. Please do not hesitate to call if you have any other questions or whenever you have trouble with your service. Customer communication and feedback is the most important tool we have for providing you with the best possible service - even, as in this case, when the problem is beyond our control.

Margie & Joe

Qwest has confirmed that there is a problem with a DS3 which connects all Buena Vista DSL customers (including MCW's Qwest DSL customers as well as others) to the Qwest DSL system. This appears to be the same problem which occurred night before last and during the last week of December.

After an hour on the phone with the Qwest ATM repair department, I was transferred to a manager. I had numerous questions about the level of service Qwest has been providing to our mutual DSL customers as well as the mutual customers of Qwest and other ISP's. The answers I got were quite disturbing. Mainly, I wanted to know why such a widespread problem, affecting all ISP's in Buena Vista who offer Qwest DSL, was happening repeatedly and for extended periods without becoming enough of a priority to call out a technician. The answer given was that Qwest DSL is a consumer grade service and therefore the acceptable repair time period is 24 hours. So, even if they knew that all DSL customers in Buena Vista went down at 10:45PM last night, they might decide not to dispatch a technician for immediate repair. They consider it to be their option to wait until the technicians show up for work at their regular times the next morning.

The next question I have, which has not yet been answered, is why the default course of action when one of MCW's DSL customer's calls Qwest for help is to have the customer reset their DSL modem which removes all of MCW's settings from the customer's modem instead of checking to see if there is a widespread outage in our area. When the modem is reset, all programming is removed and the customer will not be able to get back online until we help them put the settings back in. It is a good idea to reboot the DSL modem (unplug from power, then plug back in) but do not reset the modem to factory settings by holding the reset button on the modem while booting it.

So, it is important to call MCW first anytime you have a problem. If it's after our normal business hours, you can leave a message on the machine which will call our cell phone. Also, our home number is Option #9 on the answering machine and we are listed in the phone book. Please don't hesitate to call us whenever you are having trouble.

Thanks for your patience. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Margie & Joe

It appears to be the same problem with Qwest's Buena Vista DSLAM which occurred last month. However, Qwest has not confirmed that. The outage lasted 2 hours 40 minutes.

Thanks for your patience. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Margie & Joe

Thank you for your patience while we waited for Qwest to repair the DSL connections.

Qwest is reporting an outage affecting all DSL customers in Buena Vista. Salida customers are not affected.

We are told that the problem is between the NIU and the CSU which connect the DSLAMs in the Qwest central office here in Buena Vista.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Margie & Joe

Our technician was able to immediately restore service as soon as he reached the antenna site. It was, as we suspected, a power back-up unit which failed.

Thank you for your patience during the outage.

Margie & Joe

When power was restored to the Mt. Princeton site about 3:45AM this morning, our system came up briefly and then failed again. From the remote testing that we are able to do, it appears that two key pieces of equipment have no power. So, we believe that the failure is, ironically, the power back-up equipment. We also know that the power back-up equpipment did not provide any power during the outage since our equipment went down within seconds of the power outage. This also supports our theory that the problem is with the power back-up, not the data transmission equipment.

A technician is on his way to the site right now. We will update this message as soon as we have a report from him. Since the antenna location is up on the mountain at 10,800 feet, it will be later this morning before he reaches the site.

Thank you very much for your patience. We are working to restore service as soon as possible.

Margie & Joe

We have confirmed with Sangre De Cristo that there is a power outage at the antenna/tower site on Mt. Princeton, the site to which customers in Johnson Village, Nathrop, Mesa Antero and surrounding areas connect.

Sangre De Cristo employees are working hard to locate the problem and restore service. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we wait for service to be restored.

Margie & Joe

Our connection to the Internet backbone has been restored! Network performance may be slow for the next 1/2 hour to hour as our servers work to transmit data which has been waiting to go out. Also, email waiting to come into our network will be delivered over the next hour.

Thank you very much for your patience during this extremely frustrating outage. It is especially frustrating when the problem is beyond our control.

Although we know that a credit to your account does not make up for the inconvenience and frustration, we would like to offer a two day credit to any customer who wishes to receive it. Just send us an email to Billing@MountainComputerWizards.com or give us a call at 395-4444.

Margie & Joe

Our Internet backbone provider is in the process of moving our circuits to a working DS3 which connects in San Francisco rather than Denver. They will first hook us up with only 1 T1 in order to get service restored sooner. So, when the Internet comes back up, it will be slow for a while. Once they get that much service restored, they will expand our bandwidth to it's normal capacity.

We have finally been given more information about the outage. It is the result of emergency maintenance performed by Qwest last night. There were several circuits which did not come back up with the rest of the circuits including the DS3 on which our circuits reside. The telco's have not been able to repair the circuits. So, Savvis, MCI and Qwest are now working together to move our circuits to another node so that service can be restored. They still have not given us an estimated time of repair but our experience is that moving a circuit of this size should be possible within an hour or so.

We have also learned that the outage is affecting several other ISP's who connect to the backbone of the Internet through Denver including a local ISDN provider.

We are told that the telco's, Qwest and MCI, are working with our backbone provider, Savvis, and have identified a translation problem between the circuits. They have assured us that their top level engineers are working on the problem.

We received an update that the outage is a result of a physical problem with the circuits and that Qwest technicians are working to repair the lines.

Our backbone provider has isolated the problem which is in their main network center in Denver. The outage is affecting a large group of circuits there. Technicians have been dispatched to the site.

The problem appears to be a large network outage in Denver. Technicians are working to confirm the exact location so that the circuits can be repaired.

Our backbone connection provider has technicians working to determine the cause and location of the outage. We will update this page as soon as we have more information.

Thank you for your patience while we wait for the circuits to be repaired. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Margie & Joe

There was an outage overnight of the Qwest ATM circuit which connects MCW DSL customers to MCW and the Internet. Qwest restarted the IMA group at about 8:30AM this morning and service was restored.

We apologize for any inconvenience and have requested that the Qwest equipment causing this problem be replaced since this is not the first time that equipment has failed.

Margie & Joe

Several problems with the main MCW web server yesterday led to an overnight outage of most web sites hosted by MCW. The web server was taken down for repairs from 10:00PM last night until 7:15AM this morning when service was restored. The server is back up and running and we are not aware of any further web site outages. However, if you experience any problems with a web site hosted by MCW, please let us know right away so that we can check it out.

We apologize for any inconvenience. Thanks for your patience overnight while we worked to restore web site service.

Margie & Joe

As soon as Qwest began testing the two T1's, they began working properly again. The Qwest technician believes that the testing caused the lines to be reset.

As always, please call us right away if you receive a busy signal or have any problems getting connected. Thanks for your patience while we waited for the lines to be repaired.

Margie & Joe

Qwest is analyzing the problem to determine why some customers are receiving a very long pause, then a circuit busy when dialing one of the first two dial-up numbers, 395-4403 or 395-4405. When the lines on these two T1's fill up, Qwest is supposed to roll the calls over to the next T1's. However, that is not happening. The result is that when the main number is dialed, less then 48 of the 124 total lines are available.

Until Qwest is able to fix the problem, you may dial the alternate numbers:

395-6675 or 395-3235.

We will update this page as soon as we have new information about when Qwest expects to have the lines repaired. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Margie & Joe

Qwest DSL Circuits Repaired
Monday, October 4, 8:55AM

Qwest confirmed that they had to reseat the card in their ATM switch in Colorado Springs to which our circuits connect. They promised (again) that the card would be replaced this time. We were told that they were going to replace this same card the last time this problem occurred back in August. They assured us that, especially since we were not the only Qwest DSL Host ISP affected, the card would be replaced.

Qwest repair began testing at 6AM and dispatched technicians to Qwest central offices in Buena Vista and in Colorado Springs where our circuits connect to the Qwest DSL ATM switch at around 7AM.

The telephone company which was moving large circuits in San Francisco, where we connect to the backbone of the Internet, has completed their project. The planned maintenence should have been completed by 8:00AM but they were almost 2 hours late in restoring service. We have been told that the delay was the result of mistakes made while reconnecting several DS3's including the one on which our circuits reside. In other words, they literally got their wires crossed.

We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for your patience while we waited for the circuits to be repaired.

Margie & Joe

Our provider has clarified that it is not actually their router which is undergoing maintenance, it is the telco in California which is moving some large circuits that caused this outage. The telco has not yet explained why the outage has lasted longer than the planned maintenance window. We will update this page as soon as we have any new information.

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

Margie & Joe

Qwest has finished repairs to their DSL system. We have been told that the problems affected customers in several states, although not all Qwest DSL customers were affected. Thank you for your patience while we waited for repairs to be made.

Margie & Joe

Qwest has technicians working on the outage. They believe it is a problem with the Qwest ATM switch in Colorado Springs. Thank you for your patience while we wait for repairs to be made.

Margie & Joe

Thank you for your patience while the circuit was moved. The outage lasted approximately 20 minutes and by 11AM we were up and running again. Although our circuits are now connected through San Francisco rather than Denver, response times from the Internet are much faster than before.

As always, feel free to send us your comments, suggestions and complaints. Feedback from our customers helps us to provide better service.

Margie & Joe

Our Internet connection will go down for 20 to 30 minutes while our provider moves our circuits to another router in Denver. We had been told this would be done during early morning hours over the weekend and have just been informed that it was not. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience of this outage happening during business hours. However, we felt that if this move fixes the problem, it would be better to go ahead and get it done rather than continue to have circuit problems throughout the day.

We also want you to know that we already have contracts in hand to expand our capacity through a different provider. We feel that Savvis, which provides our current 4.5MB connections to the Internet, has been extremely negligent in handling these circuit problems. So, we will not purchase any further bandwidth from them.

It is extremely frustrating for us to experience continued circuit problems beyond our control. We have been assured that technicians worked over the weekend to test the circuits and isolate the problem but we have not yet been given any details of their activities. We appreciate your continued patience while we wait for the lines to be repaired.

Margie & Joe

Margie & Joe

Margie & Joe

Margie & Joe

Mail Server Performance Update
Tuesday, August 3, 12:30PM

Delivery of some outgoing email was delayed this morning during the installation of special features. Currently, all email, incoming and outgoing, is being delivered normally. The final feature being installed is the ability for customers of other ISP's to authenticate and use our mail server for outgoing email. The completion of that feature should be finished within the next hour.

We will continue to monitor email on the new server very closely over the next few days. If you experience any problems at all with the new server, please let us know right away.

Thank you to everyone for your patience while we worked to build a new mail server and to everyone who helped us with the process by reporting their errors to us.

Margie & Joe

Monday, August 2, 8:00PM

The new mail server is up, running and delivering email! There are still a few special functions which we are working on adding. For instance, if you are attempting to send secure email from another provider, you will need to use plain text authentication for now. Special features should be up and running by tomorrow.

Mail Server Testing in Progress
Monday, August 2, 6:30PM

The new mail server will be tested for the next hour or so. It may be brought up and down as the testing progresses.

Monday, August 2, 6:00PM

We are in the final stage of restoring email data from the old server to the new server. We expect this process to take a couple of hours.

NEW MAIL SERVER UPDATE:
Monday, August 2, 3:30PM

The new mail server has been built and configured. We are now in the process of moving customer data from the hard drives of the old server to the new one. There is so much data to be moved that we expect the process to take several hours. We expect to be fully functional by early evening.

Monday, August 2, 11:15AM

We have configured a temporary mail server for outgoing email in order to restore service faster. We are still working on repairs to the incoming mail server. So, customers can send email but cannot receive email yet.

SENDING WITHOUT RECEIVING IN OUTLOOK & OUTLOOK EXPRESS:

To send email from Microsoft Outlook Products without checking email (which will produce an error until POP service is restored), Click the vertical bar on the Right-hand side of the Send/Recieve Button and choose, "Send All." Most other email programs have separate buttons for sending and receiving so that it is easy to send only. Please give us a call if you need help using the temporary outgoing mail server.

Monday, August 2, 10:00AM

The repairs to the mail server are more serious than we originally anticipated. The mail server may be down for more than an hour. We will update this page with any new information.

Thank you for your patience while we make repairs!

Mail Delivery Delays
Monday, August 2, 9:00AM

The mail server has been experiencing delays in mail delivery on and off for the past 24 hours. All mail sent yesterday, Sunday, should now be delivered. Today, as we make further repairs to the mail server, we expect several outages of 5 to 15 minutes each.

If you are experiencing any problems, please do not hesitate to call for more information. We are working to restore mail service as quickly as possible.

Margie & Joe

As a result of the two, one-minute outages at 5:45AM and 9:45AM this morning, our DS1 provider will be stress testing our circuits for about an hour during the three hour window tonight.

During this time, our customers will be able to connect and use any servers on the MCW network but will not be able to access the Internet.

Thanks for your patience while the circuits are tested!

Margie & Joe