Time for a turnover

Today I removed our access point equipment from a site that literally cost me blood, sweat and tears after a two year journey to Frustration Central and back...

Two years ago we did an install at a central london accommodation facility. The site owners were unwilling to spend to do the job properpy and I foolishly let my good nature be taken advantage of.

We cobbled together a solution which turned out to be one of the most troublesome hotspots we've operated.

We're now free of these tight-wads and have a stack of servicable access points in stock. If anyone wants to set up a new Hotspot, please get in touch.

Out of budget and luck but just in time.

Orbit8 is run on a tiny budget. It's staffed and operated by a small team who all have full time day jobs. We're spread across 9 time zones, with the kit being in London.

When things break (and Murphey was an optimist) repairs are tricky to schedule and spares hard to come by. So when we can, we go for double belt and braces where possible. After all, this is all about delivering a 'reliable' service that you can count on.

Hopefully today will be our last visit to the datacenter, last round of tests and reboots and things will finally return to being the stable, reliable service we've come to love.

I'd like to apologise for any distruption and disconnections that may have been experienced by our users during this upgrade and migration. It was all well intentioned... honest.

Jobs completed this month:

OS & Apps upgraded and patched
New disks to repair the broken RAID mirror
Correctly configure IPMP
Mail services completely overhauled
DNS transferred
Service Provider changed

Here's to a quiet and trouble free 2006. Cheers :-)

... now back to the day job

Cheers Christian!

The Orbit8 Crew want to send thanks and regards to Christian Bullow for taking the time to sort out the wireless at Victoria Hostel in London. He did a great job. We have the best customers in the world, that's for sure!

-- The Crew

Hello Xantara

Changing service providers is always a pain in the neck. So if you're going to change Co-Lo providers too, prepare yourself for some tears.

Our prior service provider had been doing a moderate job for several years now. Their main problem was an inability to answer a phone, let alone return a call. To put it bluntly, customer service was absent.

Xantara is no bigger, but certainly more expensive. The big advatnage - they can be bothered to speak to me.

So, we chose the hottest day of the year to undertake this move. It was an unpleasant, rank smelling, bitter tasting and hassle filled experience. Lets hope we don't have to do this again too soon and that our new friends at Xantara are as professional and reliable as folks suggest.

Blood, sweat and beers

It took waaaay longer than I had planned.

The first day I had anticipated for the core build turned into a week. The main problem was package dependencies and repositories. Sunfreeware.com vs Blastwave.org - The choice between manual resolution of library dependencies or automatic. The former gives a nice lean install, the latter tends to pull down way too much cruft.

The second day I had anticipated for the apps and tools config turned into a week. JASS turned my host into a warm brick, so back to square one...

Finally we're up and running. Many Thanks and big credit to

* Mark Pettit for his Solaris x86 binaries of the ancient yet vital gnupg-1.0.6.
* Sun Microsystems for their 'backward binary compatibility' which allowed Marks Solaris 8 bins to run on Solaris 10.
* Carla for keeping me focused and helping to push on through to the other side.

Server Rebuilds and Kronies

It's the 11th hour and Colin and I have been busy rebuilding our server, hoping it will give our Orbiteers a zippier and better service. Of course, it all comes down to finding that last error burried deep in the code... that extra comma or period that causes everything to fall over.

If all goes well the new server will be up and running by the end of the week. All for you our dear Orbiteers.

Custom PC article on wifi prices

An article in Custom PC compares BT Openzone prices to orbit8 wireless. And we beat them by a mile. We're the best and the cheapest around.

Superb.

partner program ramping up

As part of the orbit8 wireless partner program launch, we are rolling out partner pages on orbit8.com. A sneak preview is shown here.

These pages will allow partners to track their sales, view the status of each access point, and see how their sites compare to other partner sites.

It will also include a forum for partners to help each other promote their hotspots.

We are trying to come up with the best ways to server our partners, so if you have any ideas, we'd love to hear about it.

Orbit8 the Blog

Welcome to the brand new orbit8 blog (orbit8.blogspot.com). Beyond simple updates to the orbit8 service and website, the blog will function as a means to detail all orbit8-related news, events, upgrades, feature additions, and much more.

orbitate forever!

--the crew