BuyVM Las Vegas Router Maintenance

At 2000h PST (8 PM), there will be a short network outage in our Las Vegas deployment as we cut over to the new MLX router. As you've noticed, we've had recurring outages in Vegas over the past week, for which a number of factors were responsible.

Unlike CNServers (the prior filtering provider), Staminus allows UDP traffic. While a definite bonus for clients needing UDP and protection, we quickly learned that our core router simply couldn't handle the excess workload - repeated CPU spikes were causing the router to seize, knocking the location offline. CNServers simply blocked UDP outright, so we were unaware of the additional stress the new filtering would bring.

After a couple days of debugging, the UDP issue was discovered, and we issued an emergency maintenance in order to move from the Vyatta platform to a BSD setup similar to our New Jersey deployment, as BSD has proven itself far superior for handling the extra loads UDP brings. Unfortunately, we were still seeing problems with the filtering itself - while Staminus was effectively mitigating several large floods against the network, there were enough 'leaks' that the network was being overwhelmed (which was causing the heavy packet loss that plagued the network until yesterday morning).

We're having a brand new, heavy duty router designed to withstand the heavy conditions the network has been under shipped to the Vegas datacentre - it will be arriving early tomorrow morning. Francisco will be arriving at the DC as well early tomorrow, and will spend his day configuring the new hardware and getting it ready for deployment. At 2000h PST (8PM), the new router will be racked up, and the Las Vegas network will be cut over from the old router. With most of the configuration being done beforehand, we're expecting less than 30 minutes for this cutover. Should the network still be down by 2030h, please check Francisco's (@FrantechCA) or my own (@Aldryic) Twitter accounts for updates, as our websites will be offline during this time.

As always, thank you for your patience while we work to get everything back to optimal performance - any questions or comments can be directed to our ticket system (https://my.frantech.ca/).

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Aldryic C'boäs,
Frantech Staff