Sept 23/24 Overnight Service Interruption - Announcement

[FONGO_steve]

Just an update for everyone in regards to this and the other downtime concerns. We currently have a next-generation server and a whole new update to our server platform in the final stages and near deployment. This will dramatically decrease this type of issues that we are having with the current server and platform. This is also a much needed upgrade to offer a continued and positive user experience as the service continues to grow at a fast success rate.

We have been doing some internal testing on the new platform, and it's been a great success so far. It's quick, snappy, and has potential for some awesome new service features in the future. We're just waiting back on a few more tests that need to be run before deploying it. It's also going to change the way our softphone communicates with the server slightly, so everyone will need to ensure they are on the latest version of the softphone as the older versions will all require updating when this change happens.

We realize that's still no answer for two service interruptions that have happened in the last month. We here at freephoneline strive to have the highest up-time we can and hope that everyone can now see that there is a heavy amount of "behind the scenes" work going on right now to ensure these interruptions will not happen again.

We are also trying to address the concerns of being better able to notify our customers of maintenance and interruptions through the home page of our site.

Thank you all for your understanding and continued patronage.

The freephoneline team.

[yaowz]

yes, but the outrage is still on.
At vancouver, outbound is ok but inbound is still off.

[peanuthead]

hi,

In last night's situation, Was the "Follow me" setting still functional?

Is there a way, may a standalone backup server to redirect the incoming calls to the specified phone in case the main server failure?

That is very important for people like me use FPL as the primary phone.


Thanks

[sl9280]

Same to me too. Cannot make local inbound call to my freephoneline number.

I need to dial '1' for all the freephoneline numbers to complete local in-bound call from other phones (Telus, Rogers, AIC, Bell, etc.). If we dail it as local call (without the prefix '1'), we shall get busy tone.

e.g. If I use a phone in Vancouver, BC call a Vancouver freephoneline number, I have to dial 1-123-456-7777 to get through. If I dial 123-456-7777, it will get a busy tone.

Dailing the LD prefix from our normal phone will incure LD charge on our nromal phone company and it conflict with what we have enjoy to call Canada wide free using freephoneline service by making just local call to their number and then forward it to another phone number in other provinces.

It would be a dialing plan translation problem that freephoneline have to work with the other carriers.

Hope we shall have this fixed very soon.

(note: while I am typing this post, Sep 24, 2010 10:00 a.m. PDT, I tried to call my freephoneline locally again, and it seemed the issue got fixed).

Regards.

[Funkytown]

Seems to be working now flawlessly, great job technical staff

[FONGO_steve]

Is the Vancouver area working now?

We were a little puzzled by that: if a phone carrier is prompting or needing you to dial 1 before our numbers, that would be an issue with their switch setup and/or translations. Nothing at our end would cause that, especially since those are existing DID ranges that we've had for a long period of time.

[sl9280]

Vancouver number that I call works now (Sep 24, 2010 at 11:20 am PST)

778-803-xxxx

Looks like there are some other colleauges at different pre-fix still not working.

It may need to give all the carriers to automatic update their translation table after freephoneline restored the voip server.

I would suggest Freephoneline technical support to perform full inbound call test for each area code and pre-fix of their network to ensure there would be a clean restore. I think this will provide a proactive customer services.

We cannot compliant our existing carriers as they were working the day before and just not working after freephoneline server failure.

Give them a day or two to settle.

[UD3046]

Phone Outage - Last night September 23th 2010 around 10:15 pm - 5:00 am toronto time no dail tone , no incoming or outgoing calls. Steve from support replyed back "brief service interruption" over night all is well as of this morning.

[FONGO_steve]

Even if our SIP server is interrupted, it still wouldn't interrupt the translations on other carriers. Our phone numbers reside in our switch, and our switch points them to the SIP server. So even if the server were having a service interruption, the switch will always be running 24/7/365 as it handles call routing for most Fibernetics services.
I'm believing the Vancouver inability to receive some inbound calls after this issue is unrelated, especially since it resolved itself and we changed nothing at our end during that time. It's working now though, so we'll keep a close eye on this area for any other signs of problems.

[Funkytown]

Example: When a website goes down caused by network outage..
<which happens to everyone who manages servers>
once the network on the server is back up running .. everyhting will remain the same as before the server went down and believe me nothing changes on the server side.

My own thoughts!

[wkeleher]

Great job guys! Had the service for about a year now and I have no complaints considering this is my only means of a telephone service. Last nights outage is the first I've personnally experianced and the way you guys restored it I commend you all for your hard work and dedication in proving a dependable phone service.

Thanks again guys!!!

[yaowz]

Vancouver is working fine for me now. Thank you for keeping us in the know.

[jtronforce]

Given the cost, I am completely happy with the service. Versus paying for the monthly fee associated with an inbound DID, the maintenance of a SIP provider account and the per min inbound and outbound cost of calls, I'll take a 1 percent hit in uptime across a month. No problem. However, there certainly could be a more consistent way to publish outage/status reports. Build a freephoneline.com/status page and integrate with RSS. Sure, open the discussion on the board, but there should be a "first place to check" before I start mucking with my SIP settings. Linking, locking and elevating/stickying threads seems like a lot of effort better spent on issue resolution.
If it's a server/overhead issue, I think you've generated enough community and brand loyalty (in the same way FreeWorldDialup did in the day) that I am sure that a co-op share model would work here. Just a thought.

[Funkytown]

I'm more or less talking about the people complaining..... ITS $50 FOR Life - stop acting like it's putting a huge dent in your WALLET & LIVES



Enjoy while it lasts!

[thomax00]

I got no dial tone (02:16 Sep 26 2010).

I'm in Tronto.

Anyone else?

[Funkytown]

I got no dial tone (02:16 Sep 26 2010).

I'm in Tronto.

Anyone else?

try rebooting your voip adapter

[thomax00]

...

I got no dial tone (02:16 Sep 26 2010).

I'm in Tronto.

Anyone else?

try rebooting your voip adapter

... how about ... try plugging in the right numbered line like LINE 1 !!!! he he ... (SPA-2102: front LED for Line 1 projects to the rear of the device to Line 2; weired)

Cheers and ... all my fault!

[Funkytown]

...

I got no dial tone (02:16 Sep 26 2010).

I'm in Tronto.

Anyone else?

try rebooting your voip adapter

... how about ... try plugging in the right numbered line like LINE 1 !!!! he he ... (SPA-2102: front LED for Line 1 projects to the rear of the device to Line 2; weired)

Cheers and ... all my fault!

doesnt that make you wanna pull your hair out

Good to hear you got it working..

[peanuthead]

hi,

In last night's situation, Was the "Follow me" setting still functional?

Is there a way, may a standalone backup server to redirect the incoming calls to the specified phone in case the main server failure?

That is very important for people like me use FPL as the primary phone.


Thanks

Thanks for answering

[westalex]

Is the server down right now? I can't seem to be able to ping voip.freephoneline.ca...

[dutty.persian]

hi,

i can't make calls. is the server down? the line is active on my pap2.

[cal653]

It's September 27, 2010 5:17PST and its down here again too in Vancouver.

[brentw]

Yep, down in Toronto too.

[snowdon]

Yep, down in Toronto too.

Down in Ottawa.

[kevingamble]

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7600]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Kevin>ping voip.freephoneline.ca

Pinging voip.freephoneline.ca [208.65.240.142] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 208.65.240.142:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Users\Kevin>


down also