Murphy’s law — if it can go wrong, it will — seemed to prevail beginning Sunday and continuing through Tuesday night for internet service provider VIAccess.
The problem began when VIAccess implemented a planned change of service providers to speed up service for its customers.
Gordon Ackley, owner of VIAccess, said when his people made the change, it took 24 hours for information to “circle the globe” so essentially “we dropped into a black hole.”
They came out of the hole Monday and service was restored until 5 p.m. when human error took over, compounding frustration and problems for VIAccess customers.
Ackley said someone at MCI in Miami entered a code which resulted in VIAccess appearing to no longer exist. The human error could have happened any time he said. It just happened to occur in conjunction with the changeover.
“We’ve been solid now for 12 hours,“ Ackley said.
VIAccess delivered 38,000 pieces of mail after the “blackout” Sunday. Almost no mail was lost, according to Ackley. The ISP normally delivers between 25,000 and 30,000 pieces of mail a day.
He explained that during the 24-hour changeover period, mail was either returned to the sender or held in a queue and then delivered.
“I don’t think we lost much,” he said.
As for people who are still experiencing problems, Ackley said they have to manually change their DNS in their browsers to 63.64.76.2 or 63.64.76.3. Or they can call 719-9179 for technical assistance.
The changeover from a service provider in Chicago to the new one in Miami will substantially increase speed for local users because VIAccess has a direct connection with them with no stops in between, Ackley said.
But, he added, the transition “could have been more graceful.”
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