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Is the server down?
Our number 1 question that our customers ask is “Are you servers down”? The answer 99.9% of the time is NO. The other popular question is “Why is my e-mail is not working?” Solution to both of these most of the time is “reboot your computer or reboot your modem/router”.

All of our servers are monitored 24/7 and checked by a computer every minute to verify it’s working properly. If something goes wrong with any server, several alarms go off. First a computer screen in the office goes red and buzzes anyone near it, then 2 pagers are automatically dialed that alert both Captain Jack and the system administrator of the problem. If something does go wrong with any server we will be aware of it before you are in most cases.

Having said that, I want to assure you that none of our servers have given us any problems. Many have been working for over a year without being restarted or re-booted. All of them are programmed to automatically re-boot themselves if they sense any problem, so most of the time they have fixed themselves before we are notified of any problem. In the past 90 days, 1 server out of the many servers I have went down for a total of 5 minutes before it was restarted.

99.9% of the time, the problem you are calling about is with YOUR EQUIPMENT. When was the last time you rebooted your computer or modem/router? Last week I thought the mail server was having problems. I couldn’t get my e-mail. Instead of calling my techs, I re-booted my computer and that didn’t solve the problem, I still couldn’t get my e-mails. After an hour or so of searching for the answer, I found the problem on my computer. Somehow, I have no idea how; my mail account went “off line”. I put it back on line and my e-mail worded again. What this story is about is a reminder that most e-mail problems are with your computer. We have 2 mail servers and if one goes down, the other one takes over. My e-mail servers handle a million pieces of e-mail everyday. There are over 1,000 e-mail customers so if something really did go wrong with our mail server, the phones would be ringing off the hook.

Please check your computer first before calling and when you do call, don’t start out by asking “are the servers down?’ Tell us you are having trouble with your e-mail or your web site and we’ll help you with your problem.