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INTERNET CONNECTION DOWN THURSDAY MORNING, JULY 17
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At about 8:00 AM today (Thursday, July 17) a major fiber optic cable
feeding UUNET failed.  This cut off many UUNET customers, including BCPL,
from the rest of the Internet.  Technicians from UUNET Technologies and
the local telco are working on the problem, but as of 9:30 AM they believe
were unable to estimate when connectivity will be restored.

Until the cable is repaired you will only be able to access resources on
BCPL's own network (our Web pages, for example). You will not be able to
access anything outside the BCPL network.  The single exception is Usenet
News.  Our connection to the news server at ABSnet does not go through
UUNET, so it is still in operation.

Any mail from the outside world addressed to you will be queued on one of
UUNET's mail exchange hosts for delivery to BCPL once the connection is
restored.  However please do not attempt to send e-mail to non-BCPL
addresses until our connection is restored.  We cannot guarantee if or
when it will be delivered.

The problem is not in your equipment, and it is not in your connection to
BCPL.  Please DO NOT disconnect and reconnect over and over again in an
attempt to "fix" the problem.  All that will do is overload the access
servers and our UNIX host with login requests, making it difficult for
them to deal with anything else.

I will post updates via System News as we learn more from UUNET about the
situation. 
 
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If you have questions about this, or about anything else related to
your BCPL Internet Account, please contact the BCPL Help Desk.

 Phone:   410-887-3297
 FAX:     410-887-2091
 E-Mail:  help@mail.bcpl.lib.md.us

 Help Pages:            http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/help.html
                        (or enter "help" at the UNIX shell prompt)

 System News Archives:  http://www.bcpl.lib.md.us/sysnews.html
                        (or enter "sysnews" at the UNIX shell prompt)