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Ku-Band outage follow-up (fwd)


===============================================================================
Robb Kambic                                Unidata Program Center
Software Engineer III                      Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research
address@hidden             WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/
===============================================================================

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 15:34:03 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gilbert Sebenste <address@hidden>
To: address@hidden
Subject: Ku-Band outage follow-up (fwd)

Here is the latest from Alden.

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Gilbert Sebenste                                                     ********
Internet: address@hidden    (My opinions only!)                     ******
Staff Meteorologist, Northern Illinois University                      ****
E-mail: address@hidden                                 ***
web: http://weather.admin.niu.edu                                      **
Work phone: 815-753-5492                                                *
*******************************************************************************

Dear Sir,

As you are probably aware, Alden experienced a major outage of the T1
telephone circuit between Alden's facilities in Massachusetts and the
satellite uplink facility in Illinois.  This interrupted the satellite
broadcast of Domestic Plus service, International Data service, FAA604
service, High Resolution service (GRIB data), Lightning Data service and the
Satellite Imagery Service.

After a significant amount of work with MCI and Ameritech (the local
telephone company serving Illinois) the circuit was finally restored Monday,
although we had a brief interruption of service on Tuesday due to some fine
tuning of the T1 circuit.

Your satellite receiver should now be receiving data, with the data lights
for each data service on the receiver flickering from red to orange or red
to green.  You may have to power off your receiver and then power it back on
to reset it.  You may also have to reboot your PC to restart the ingest task
of your computer if new data is not being received by the PC.

If after trying these 2 steps you are still not receiving data, please
contact our network control center at:

Tel: 800-225-9492, ext. 2329
Fax: 508-366-3898
Email:      address@hidden

We are making changes to ensure this long an outage never happens again.  In
the past when we had an outage, we've often had the problem fixed before
most of our customers even noticed there was a problem.  However, with
approximately 200 customers effected this time, we realized the need for a
means of contacting all of our customers quickly to advise them of a problem
and keep them informed as we progressed.  During this outage we found email
was the best and most efficient method to do this, so we will be putting
together email lists of all customers by the data services they receive.
This will also provide a convenient way to advise customers of changes being
made by Alden, the National Weather Service, etc.

We are also looking at some type of Internet backup for our customers who
must absolutely have data all the time. We will send out further information
on this capability as we further design and test this approach.

We cannot adequately express our deepest concern as to how this outage has
impacted you, our customer.  We realize Alden's long reputation for
delivering weather data in a reliable and timely manner has been
significantly damaged, however we are committed to restoring your confidence
in Alden, not through these words, but by our actions as we work to improve
the services we provide to you.

With our sincerest apologies to you and to your customers,

David K. Doyle
Chief Executive Officer