ITTS Update

Processing of inbound email is caught up. More than 53,000 email messages were processed in the last 24 hours. Please let us know if you experience any email slowness going forward.

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Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend we received an overwhelming amount of spam email, which has caused a slowdown in the processing of inbound email. Outbound email appears to be fine. The backlog built up over the weekend is taking quite a while to process, as it is first being filtered for spam. The backlog has been being processed all day Monday, November 27th, and is expected to continue through the evening. We will continue to provide updates as the processing continues.

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The new Google search appliance was successfully installed with a minimum of disruption. In the process of configuring the new appliance, we set the indexing to cover ALA wiki and blog content as well. Many thanks to the departing Jack Briody for his swift and precise work!

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We will install the new Google search appliance today at around 11:30 a.m. CST. Search will be unavailable for a brief time as we bring the old appliance down and get the new one installed and configured. We don’t expect this to take more than an hour. The website will continue to function; just search will be affected.

We apologize for the timing, but it’s necessary to do this now for at least two reasons: we are experiencing some instability with the old box (which may be due to licensing issues) and Jack Briody’s last day is tomorrow! Thanks for your patience.

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Effective November 14, 2006, ALA is moving to a managed service partnership to support our network infrastructure. This will improve delivery of services to our customers, both internal and external. Managed services gives us 24/7 access to an array of expertise for our day to day operations, and additional knowledge to address any issues that arise.

Many organizations are moving to outside managed services where the vendor provides trained consultants who provide a wide range of technical skills capable of handling all our current and future network infrastructure needs.

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Our upgraded Firewall is in place and working. It’s a CISCO 5520 Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA). The ASA represents an improved technology over our previous firewall. It has the ability to recognize types of threatening behavior in addition to restricting the types of communication it allows through.

The installation began just after 9:00 am Saturday, and services were restored by 11:00 am. Web services were interrupted during that period, including email. Email began coming in around 10:15. None should have been lost.

If you’d like to know more about the ASA, you can read the CISCO product brochure:

http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps6120/c1031/cdccont_0900aecd80285492.pdf

For a very favorable technical review of the ASA (the testing was sponsored by CISCO), see:
http://www.cisco.com/application/pdf/en/us/guest/products/ps6120/c1244/cdccont_0900aecd80350d4e.pdf

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The installation of the new firewall has been scheduled for Saturday, November 11, 2006, beginning at 9:00 a.m.

While we do not expect any interruptions to our services, this installation will require firewall rule changes recommended by our security consultants that will affect all network communications. We will keep you updated via email and this blog as events warrant.

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