<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=Windows-1252">
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)">
<style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:#0563C1;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:#954F72;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style>
</head>
<body lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72">
<div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Good afternoon,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Many of you were aware of many recent updates to the server infrastructure that runs the Allstar network as maintained by the core Allstar team. Some of these updates did cause some issues around NAT that
we do NOT need to relive. I am one of the people who donates servers, bandwidth and storage space at my top tier datacenters. My company is gracious enough to allow me research space that I have donated to the project directly to Jim and beyond.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Those recent updates worked really hard to make sure we had a distributed architecture! We do NOT rely on a single location, a single datacenter, a single physical server. The ORD (Chicago, IL) location
of Allstar that the core team uses is actually made up of over 32 blade servers and the load even with-in the datacenter is distributed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">I just thought, given the recent weather issues across the US it would be important to note that this painful work (done by some very tired out people) was done for your benefit! The network as designed using
the core and original Allstar network systems is now redundant and distributed. There is a core team of us who are Network Engineers and Data Center Engineers on the original team (going back to when Jim was alive) and we are doing this right!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">To that point, as the goal is to be open and forth-right with information – please feel free to see the Public link to our network statistics and information:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><a href="https://grafana.allstarlink.org/">https://grafana.allstarlink.org/</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">You as an end-user can now see the stats of the Allstar core infrastructure at any time! Please know we continue to work on improvements, it was a LARGE project to get the legacy network to this point and
now that those waters are settling you will begin to see advances. We don’t run the back-end of this network lightly or on a Raspberry Pi :><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">If you have questions, as always, the team is here to assist. Please know there are many of us working behind the scenes to keep the Allstar network we all know and love running and online 24x7x365.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Feel free to email directly off-list if any questions need to be answered. Want to help? Use the donation link to send Allstar a donation (please note, my commercial company doesn’t request any fees).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">Mike Wolthuis<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt">KB8ZGL<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>