Hi All
Today we became aware that SAIX/Telkom blocked the IP address of our hosted sites. This is what we know:
1) Customers located in South Africa will likely get a time out or a "broken link" message when trying to view their published sites.
2) In reality their sites ARE published and people in the rest of the world will be able to view them with no problem.
3) South African customers will be able to access Yola.com and the site builder as these use a different IP address.
Why has this happened?
We don't know. One possibility is that someone abused our hosting to create a bad website. SAIX/Telkom may have received complaints and blocked our IP address as a consequence. Yola takes abuse very seriously and responds to all abuse reports promptly and decisively. We do not know for sure that this is what has happened in this instance, and if it is, we are not aware of it, but we know that it is always a possibility given the nature of our service. We hope that this is not the case, but we will do our best to find out and resolve the matter swiftly.
What we are doing about it:
We have contacted SAIX and are waiting on a response from them. We will continue to seek information and a solution and update our South African customers as soon as we know more.
What you can do:
If you are affected by the situation, please contact your ISP and let them know that you cannot get to your own published website. The more people who do this, the better, as ISPs need to be aware of the problem that has been created for their own customers.
Today we became aware that SAIX/Telkom blocked the IP address of our hosted sites. This is what we know:
1) Customers located in South Africa will likely get a time out or a "broken link" message when trying to view their published sites.
2) In reality their sites ARE published and people in the rest of the world will be able to view them with no problem.
3) South African customers will be able to access Yola.com and the site builder as these use a different IP address.
Why has this happened?
We don't know. One possibility is that someone abused our hosting to create a bad website. SAIX/Telkom may have received complaints and blocked our IP address as a consequence. Yola takes abuse very seriously and responds to all abuse reports promptly and decisively. We do not know for sure that this is what has happened in this instance, and if it is, we are not aware of it, but we know that it is always a possibility given the nature of our service. We hope that this is not the case, but we will do our best to find out and resolve the matter swiftly.
What we are doing about it:
We have contacted SAIX and are waiting on a response from them. We will continue to seek information and a solution and update our South African customers as soon as we know more.
What you can do:
If you are affected by the situation, please contact your ISP and let them know that you cannot get to your own published website. The more people who do this, the better, as ISPs need to be aware of the problem that has been created for their own customers.
Monique, VP of Customer Support
Posted 10 years ago
Monique, VP of Customer Support
Boomer, Champion
I've taken 2 days off work (Friday and Monday) to work on my sites. As most of my pages have images (which I can't see in the site builder), I'm currently working on text based pages only but am quickly running out of things to do. I'm starting to get concerned about when this is going to be resolved. The "could take days" has me very worried.
I feel for guys like PowerStocks who is losing business. Luckily I'm only losing time. I have contacted Vodacom and have recieved a response back from them. I have sent them a further email explaining in more detail, but I doubt weather I'm going to get much joy going this route. I know this is out of your hands, Yola, but I think
you guys have more clout with the ISP's than us users. Any news yet?
I found this interesting reading:
http://www.saix.net/cgi-bin/saix_supp...
SAIX Fault Handling and Escalation Procedure
I feel for guys like PowerStocks who is losing business. Luckily I'm only losing time. I have contacted Vodacom and have recieved a response back from them. I have sent them a further email explaining in more detail, but I doubt weather I'm going to get much joy going this route. I know this is out of your hands, Yola, but I think
you guys have more clout with the ISP's than us users. Any news yet?
I found this interesting reading:
http://www.saix.net/cgi-bin/saix_supp...
SAIX Fault Handling and Escalation Procedure
If no response is received 30 minutes after logging the fault on the online Fault/Query System (SAIX Customers Only), a telephone enquiry can be made to the SAIX HelpDesk querying the status of the fault.
After this call has been made and a further 30 minutes has elapsed and no satisfactory feedback has been received, you may escalate the problem by completing a Fault/Query System (SAIX Customers Only) where it will be attended to immediately.
If a further 30 minutes has elapsed and still no satisfactory feedback has been received. The SAIX HelpDesk Team Leaders can be contacted as follows Click Here(Secure Section).
Monique, VP of Customer Support
Boomer - I assure you that we are not leaving this one up to our customers. We are dealing with this at the very highest level. Vinny is getting involved personally to resolve this issue and ensure that it does not happen again. Sadly Telkom/SAIX just decided to disable access to thousands of sites, rather than taking the trouble to communicate with us first and give us the opportunity to resolve the issue speedily. We find this completely unacceptable and I can assure you that this has our undivided attention. We also appreciate it when Telkom's customers add their voice as this lends even greater weight to the argument.
Monique, VP of Customer Support
BTW - we have just tried the above procedure again and got given the run around again. We can keep trying but on the week end we are probably going to end up dealing with people who don't have the ability to do anything about this. I am sure we will make much more progress tomorrow.
Boomer, Champion
Thanks Monique,
I know you guys are doing everything in your power to resolve this one, just like you always do. It so great to have this kind of support and I love you guys for this.
From past experience, I always doubt Telkom's customer support and the "could be days" comment really sounds like something they could say.
See what happens when you leave SA, the whole place falls apart ;)
Hope you are getting some time off to enjoy the sights and sounds of San Francisco. If you start feeling homesick, you know where to look: http://helderberg.cc/ I can't view it :(
The two Adrian's are looking after the place, so enjoy yourself and don't work to hard. :) Thanks Vinny for putting your weight behind this one.
I know you guys are doing everything in your power to resolve this one, just like you always do. It so great to have this kind of support and I love you guys for this.
From past experience, I always doubt Telkom's customer support and the "could be days" comment really sounds like something they could say.
See what happens when you leave SA, the whole place falls apart ;)
Hope you are getting some time off to enjoy the sights and sounds of San Francisco. If you start feeling homesick, you know where to look: http://helderberg.cc/ I can't view it :(
The two Adrian's are looking after the place, so enjoy yourself and don't work to hard. :) Thanks Vinny for putting your weight behind this one.
Monique, VP of Customer Support
Had a lovely Ferry ride on the Bay and tried not to obsess about this. It is very upsetting though! The San Francisco bay is pretty but not as pretty as Gordon's Bay!
My ISP cant help me says Yola must deal with their ISP to have call logged with SAIX to have the blacklisting removed. They say once this is done it should be quick but I am worried if we know what the problem is and we have removed the offending website, why is it taking so long to resolve this. My contact at SAIX says he cant find a call logged for this isse which concerns me
I can tell you that a fault has definitely been logged we have a reference number that I'd rather not share in a public forum. However, because it is the weekend there are no managers around to take action. We are doing everything we can at our end to resolve the problem. This is not an acceptable situation to us, but unfortunately we are now waiting on Telkom.
Monique, VP of Customer Support
would you mind emailing me when this is resolved on richard@solaraza.co.za
Monique, VP of Customer Support
Sure thing. We will let you know as soon as it is resolved.
hi guys,
if yola can agree with this can i e-mail SAIX/TELKOM to sort this out and see whats the problem with this or somthing??
if yola can agree with this can i e-mail SAIX/TELKOM to sort this out and see whats the problem with this or somthing??
Monique, VP of Customer Support
By all means email them. The more complaints they receive, the better.
Yes do e mail and phone them because when it comes down to it you are their customer...A responsible provider would have contacted Yola and informed them of a problem site that came to their attention and then give Yola a chance to take care of it in a fair and proper manner.
What a joy to see my site pop up again on its public URL, i can turn my google-ads back on and try recover lost sales. A lesson from this for (hopefully never) a next time is the use of the preview URL's for ecommerce sites such as mine that are subscription based. Had I known about this trick on Friday PM rather than discovering it in desperation on Sunday night, my family would not have had to endure my state of depression and angst. At least I never felt alone in this through the use of this forum and Yola's support staff were terrific so my faith is restored in my original choice (to much critisicm from colleagues) to launch my service from a free platform because I wanted to support a startup with a distinct SA flavour.
Monique, VP of Customer Support
Glad this is over now! Sorry about all the stress to you and your family, and thank you for your support. Just a word of caution: access to the preview URL is actually a weak point for us (for other reasons) and soon we will make sure that only logged in users can access it. So this workaround will not be available forever. However, we will try to put other measures in place to ensure that this never happens again and that we have a backup plan if it does.
gotcha. if we come out of this stronger with a more robust setup then it was not in vain
so it is all sorted now?? monqiue
Monique, VP of Customer Support
Yes. South African customers are now able to access their sites. We are still following up to find a way to prevent future problems but for now everything seems to be in order, and we will continue to take swift action if any problems arise.
Boomer, Champion