Thanks to the some excellent problem reports received this morning, I was able to coordinate with our internet provider Allstream to identify a recurring intermittent issue in their logs.

It seems that there are indeed random, brief connection drops on our T-1 line. They have been brief enough not to raise any flags or alarms here, but should it occur during a data transfer, the transfer is interupted which can result in either a broken / stuttering print job, or a dropped connection to NorthstAr / PolAris.

Other services such as email and web are typically uneffected as they are ‘asynchronous’ in nature, meaning that if a packet is lost in transit, it is not harmful to resend it.  ‘Synchronous’ services however (NorsthAr, PolAris, and print streams) are broken when this sort of connection-drop occurs.

Having said all this, the problem is not yet solved -but at least it has been identified and Allstream is now working on it at their end. They will be closely monitoring the T-1 line throughout the day today, and may be able to catch and isolate the problem that way. If not, then they take Maksystems offline tonight (after 6:00pm) to run some intensive tests on their equipment, in order to identify where exactly the fault lies.

In any event, I will continue to post updates as news becomes available.