September 19, 2020
On August 29th we posted the following: we have experienced a summer like no other in our 15 plus years of providing service to our local communities.
Weather wise: storms, lightening damage, tree growth have kept us running, as has the increasing demand for reliable internet with greater speeds and capacities.
This week was fraught with additional challenges as there was an incumbent’s fibre cut near Calgary whose back up system also failed resulting in a significant outage that impacted our service. On Friday, a core router failure was resolved by our upstream provider in the early afternoon; however, further up the line into the transit network bottlenecks and other issues were created impacting connectivity to the network that took some time for the engineers to resolve.
Our messaging system was quickly overwhelmed as every client was down. Our voice message system would not allow us to change the message or erase messages until the provisioning department of that company could reset the systems. At that time we were able to update our messaging on 780-669-1001; the issue was compounded as our commonly called phone lines are VOIP, hence, were not ringing. It was a learning moment and we sincerely apologize recognizing the disruption felt by our clients, in particular during these times, when internet has taken on a new meaning in navigating our work, educational and personal lives.
At this time we are unable to call back each client impacted but have started working on the development of an automated notification system. Please watch for further communications on this in the upcoming weeks as you will be required to opt in to receive notifications. We will also be reviewing other protocols to determine enhancements.
Lastly, we felt some explanation of the internet would assist in advancing the understanding of our comments on upstream providers. There is a saying that the internet is not made but created. In essence, it is nothing more than roads and interstates that connect networks together forming the “internet super highway” as illustrated by microtik above.
The internet is a conglomeration of millions of networks. Ours is considered a “last mile network”. We connect our clients wirelessly to an upstream provider who purchases bandwidth that is transported through the Supernet which is managed by another incumbent local exchange carrier (large telecommunications company) on a fibre network to a core vault. At the core vault, traffic is sent through various routes (generally fibre) to other networks that are similar and so on and so forth connecting the world to the web. As demonstrated this week, fibre cuts, router failures and issues up the line can have catastrophic consequences at our level. Generally, there is redundancy so things switch over quickly such as with the the fibre cut - service was directed to the back up line owned by another incumbent but failed; hence, the outage was not resolved seamlessly as one would expect.
We appreciate the patience and commitment of our clients. Service was restored yesterday evening. Powering down your router or restarting your computer if you are directly connected should resolve the issue. Should this not be effective, please send an email to support@canadasurfs.net with the subject - “service not restored” so we can review asap. Unfortunately, we are unable to call all clients back given the magnitude and duration of the outage. This event will serve to make us stronger - this is our commitment to you.
Sincerely, your team at Canadasurfs.
July 1, 2020
We, at Canadasurfs Internet, love Canada and agree with Bono, “the world needs more Canada”. Today, symbolizes our values as Canadians as well as our history (both the good and the bad) and what we have and can continue to learn from it. We are forever thankful to be able to call ourselves Canadians. Below are some quotes we felt stood out for us that we wanted to share in honour of Canada Day.
“The origin of the word or name Canada derives from the word kanatan that is found in the languages of the Iroquois, the Cree and the Algonquin-speaking peoples of North America. Kanatan means it is pure, clean sacred, which denotes a place. When the word is shortened to kanata it comes to mean to make pure, clean, sacred - it becomes an action.....by understanding the word kanata in this way is to see our country as a verb and not a noun. For which we are reminded every day, to seek ways to make kanata into kanatan.” Lorne Cardinal, Actor
“O Canada. These days, I’m feeling more proud than ever of my Canadian roots. Day after day we witness the madness and sadness around the world, and know deep in the soul of our north country, there is kindness and caring at its core” Robbie Robertson, musician
“My Canadian-ness affects every aspect of being. My American friends once accused me of enjoying being Canadian. GUILTY AS CHARGED” Mike Myers, actor-comedian
Have a wonderful day and stay safe, from your friends at Canadasurfs High Speed Internet.
April 25, 2020
We just wanted to share our sincere appreciation for the support you provide us in keeping our staff safe by troubleshooting over the phone and social distancing when we are out. We all have a new appreciation of the internet as we work our way through the pandemic and how it affords us the ability to continue to work from home, educate our kids and keep connected socially.
The importance of Internet was evident when we started in 2004, but it’s evolution as a key aspect of our everyday life was not. What has not changed for us is our appreciation of our communities, of the heroes we work with everyday keeping our lives and economy running. We knew in 2004 that we could only do this work in partnership with our neighbours - in fact 125 of our neighbours signed a support letter to change the county by-law allowing us to operate from our backyard. As we continued to expand and provide the service to a broader area, this has not changed - it has just taken on an unexpected new meaning. Thank you for keeping our staff safe and being such great partners in providing this service.