Today during our regularly scheduled maintenance window (Wednesdays from midnight to 6AM) we conducted maintenance to improve our eoni.com email service.

Last week we had a customer receive an email asking to provide personal information.  The customer provided their username and password to someone they thought had a legitimate need.  It turns out that someone (hereafter referred to as the spammer) wanted to hijack our customers email so they could send bulk email unsolicited commercial email (spam).  That spammer who tricked the EONI customer into giving up their password sent tens of thousands of emails.  The from address of those emails was that of the EONI customer.  A large number of those emails were detected as spam by the recipients.  This caused all eoni.com email customers to be unable to send to Yahoo, MSN, Hotmail, and other large email service providers for 2-3 days last week.

Since EONI policy allows up to 100 recipients per message and up to 300 messages per day (see our policy page) the spammer could send email a while before the limit was hit.  Effective today our email system tracks the total number of recipients of email sent by each eoni.com email subscriber.  The default limit will be 500 recipients per day.

Please remember that EONI will never ask you to provide your username, password or otherwise verify your account.  We already have your password we would not ask you to provide it to us. 

Today we upgraded our email system to make the system more secure to effectively stop trouble before it becomes a problem.  In addition we made other improvements:
1. EONI web mail interface is faster
2. You can now search items in the quarantine automatically in web mail.
3. Pictures in the body of emails are not longer lost when forwarding or replying to emails in web mail.

Thanks for your patience as we work to make email, safer, more secure and more reliable.

Again, please remember that EONI will never ask you to provide your username, password or otherwise verify your account.  We already have your password we would not ask you to provide it to us. 

Haitian Earthquake Relief Fraud Alert The FBI today reminds Internet users who receive appeals to donate money in the aftermath of Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti to apply a critical eye and do their due diligence before responding to those requests. Past tragedies and natural disasters have prompted individuals with criminal intent to solicit contributions purportedly for a charitable organization and/or a good cause. Therefore, before making a donation of any kind, consumers should adhere to certain guidelines, to include the following: Do not respond to any unsolicited (spam) incoming e-mails, including clicking links contained within those messages. Be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims or officials asking for donations via e-mail or social networking sites. Verify the legitimacy of nonprofit organizations by utilizing various Internet-based resources that may assist in confirming the group’s existence and its nonprofit status rather than following a purported link to the site. Be cautious of e-mails that claim to show pictures of the disaster areas in attached files because the files may contain viruses. Only open attachments from known senders. Make contributions directly to known organizations rather than relying on others to make the donation on your behalf to ensure contributions are received and used for intended purposes. Do not give your personal or financial information to anyone who solicits contributions: Providing such information may compromise your identity and make you vulnerable to identity theft. Anyone who has received an e-mail referencing the above information or anyone who may have been a victim of this or a similar incident should notify the IC3 via www.ic3.gov. For further information, please visit the FBI's Web site: http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel10/earthquake011310.htm   more »

EONI takes this opportunity to say thank you for choosing EONI for your Internet services.  We truly appreciate your business and wish you and yours a very Happy Holiday season.

Our technical support will close early at 6PM on December 12, December 24 and December 31.

Our retail store, business office and technical support will be closed December 25 and January 1.

Thanks for your business.  We wish you much success in 2010!

Throughout the spring and summer EONI has been very busy bringing more capacity for subscribers, more coverage and more speed to the EONI network.

We continue to add more ADSL subscriber capacity into La Grande and Enterprise.  We also continue to see more growth in customers we serve on Qwest ADSL.

In early May we added additional wireless subscriber capacity in Wallowa.

In early July we expanded our wireless coverage in Lostine.  Later in July we increased speed and capacity for traffic to our wireless network in Joseph.  Today we doubled the available capacity to add subscribers in Joseph.

We have more wireless upgrades, expanded DSL service areas and other improvements in progress.  Stay tuned here for more updates!

Thanks for choosing EONI

Today we completed an upgrade to our Enterprise DSL system to increase capacity to the Internet.

Effective immediately we have two faster DSL plans available in Enterprise:
* EONI Silver (up to 3 Mbs download and up to 768 Kbs upload)
* EONI Gold (up to 5 Mbs download and up to 1 Mbs upload)

Contact EONI today to get the fastest and most reliable Internet value available in Enterprise.

Ask us how we can allow you to keep your phone number and get a better phone service as well!

Over the past few weeks we have completed several network upgrades.

La Grande:
Today we replaced our wireless link to the Sac Annex site which serves many of our wireless customers in southern Union County.

Enterprise:
About 8 weeks ago we expanded the ADSL system we have been running for 2 years with great success in La Grande to our Enterprise service area.  Presently we are offering our Bronze ADSL service level of up to 1 megabit per second download and 256 kilobits per second upload in Enterprise.  The new ADSL system allows you to have a phone line with no dial tone and just have high speed Internet which we call “standalone ADSL”.  You can also get a package with high speed Internet and your existing local phone number all delivered for $10 more (plus applicable required taxes, surcharges, etc).  For more information please see our web site.

On Monday of this week we increased the capacity to our Enterprise ADSL system to have 6 times the capacity we started with.  We are planning within six weeks from today to have our Enterprise ADSL system to have seven times the capacity we have today!  After this next upgrade EONI will begin offering our Silver ADSL service level of up to 3 megabit per second download and 768 kilobits per second upload. The response to our soft roll-out has been phenomenal.  By soft roll-out we mean we are not making an effort yet to get the word out that the ADSL service is available in Enterprise.  Customer feedback has been excellent.  We are excited that our customers are so happy with the ability to be online with high speed Internet (even faster than our wireless service) and use their same phone number that they have always had at the same time all with one local company to contact that offers great rates and great local service.  For more information on rates and services please check our sites:

If you are interested in a phone and DSL package see this page.

If you just want high speed Internet alone in Enterprise please see this page.

Travis takes the EONI snowmobile on a maintenance run to EONI facilities on Mt. Fanny ...

EONI takes this opportunity to say thank you for choosing EONI for your Internet services.  We truly appreciate your business and wish you and yours a very Happy Holiday season.

Our retail store, business office and technical support will be closed December 25 and on December 26.  We will also be closed on January 1.

Thanks for your business.  We wish you much success in the new year!

EONI is pleased to now offer our high speed wireless Internet service in Wallowa and Lostine.  This is a real option for super-fast, always-on Internet service.  No phone line is required.  If you have line of sight visibility from your location to our facilities on the north side of Tick Hill, you should be able to receive our service. 

All EONI high speed Internet plans include:

- 10 email addresses.
- email spam and virus filter service.
- local tech support 7 days a week.
- a companion dialup account to use when you travel.

Our initial group of test customers report that the service is working very well and they are excited to use the Internet again.  Instant access to web sites, email and other Internet services are just a click away!

We know that there is a lot of pent up demand for our wireless Internet service.  We will begin installing customers on a first come, first served basis.  For more information about the service including pricing and the ability to order online please click here.  Or call us at 541-962-7873 or 800-785-7873.  You will always talk to someone right here and not someone in a far away land.

Thank you to everyone who offered comments and support during the process to bring our service to Wallowa and Lostine.  We appreciate your patience and trust. 

We have received many inquiries about when EONI wireless service would be available in the Wallowa and Lostine service areas.

We are pleased to report that we currently have two customers testing the service in Wallowa.  We have received extremely positive comments from these customers so far.  We have conducted initial tests in Lostine and we believe the service quality in Lostine should be good as well.

If you are interested in receiving EONI high speed Internet access in Wallowa or Lostine please add your name to our wireless waiting list by clicking here.  If you have previously added your name to our wireless waiting list you do not need to repeat this process.

EONI plans to conduct tests and solicit feedback from test customers for the next 10 days.  If EONI believes the system is ready for service we will update this news page on our web site, notify all EONI customers on the wireless waiting list and notify all customers who have an active EONI service plan in the Wallowa or Lostine zip codes.

Thanks for your continued patience and trust.

Do you want to know how many hours you have been connected to EONI?
Do you want to know how much data you have transferred on your EONI connection?

If so, you will appreciate the new EONI online usage tool available on our web site.

You will need your EONI username and password you use for your dialup, DSL or wireless account.
If you do not have this information, please contact EONI to get your username and password.

To access the tool go to our web site at eoni.com then at the top of the page click "CONTACT" and on the contact page you will see a link: <see your online usage>.

Or you can click this link to take you directly to the online usage tool.

EONI customers have been receiving emails asking for their EONI account information or other personal identification information. 

 

Please note that all of these emails are fakes.  These emails are what is known as “phishing.” Phishing is a scam where someone is trying to gain access to your accounts or personal information.  There are a number of resources to learn about phishing.  The link below offers some good advice and explanations about phishing:

 

http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs.html

 

While in the past, fraudulent attempts at getting your personal information were mainly aimed at imitating financial organizations (such as banks, PayPal, and similar institutions), these scams appear to be getting more widespread and targeting other companies.  EONI and other Internet service providers are seeing a significant rise in these scams aimed at our customers.

 

Remember, EONI will NEVER ask for your password or other personal information via email.  If you are ever in doubt about any communication from EONI about your account, please call us directly at either 962-7873 or our toll free number 1-800-785-7873. 

 

If you have responded to any of the fake phishing emails and provided your password, then please contact us immediately and ask us to assign your account(s) new passwords. 

 

Effective September 1, 2008, EONI will no longer provide technical support for computer systems running older versions of operating systems that no longer have official technical support from the manufacturer.  This affects both Microsoft and Apple operating systems.  Computers running the operating systems below are affected.

 

 Microsoft: any version of Windows 98 or Windows Millennium (Windows ME) will not be supported as of September 1, 2008.  Stated another way, where Microsoft operating systems are on your computer, EONI will only offer technical support if your computer is currently officially supported by Microsoft.  Microsoft ended technical support for Windows 98 and Windows ME on July 11, 2006.  (For reference, Microsoft technical support for earlier products, like Windows 95, Windows NT, and Windows 3.x ended earlier than the 2006 date.  EONI ended technical support for these products several years ago.)

 

Apple: any version of Apple software earlier than OS 10.2 will not be supported by EONI as of September 1, 2008.

 

What exactly does this mean for you as an EONI customer?  The following list is a more detailed explanation.

 

1. Internet access.  If you call for technical support for your Internet access and you have a computer running Windows 98, Windows ME, any older Microsoft operating systems noted above, or an Apple/Macintosh computer running OS 9.x or older, EONI cannot provide you assistance with your Internet connection or any Internet application such as email or web browsers.  You may be able to make your computer running one of these operating systems work with EONI Internet access, but EONI cannot offer you technical support with your connection.

 

2. Computer repairs.  If you bring your computer in to EONI for any kind of repair and your computer is running an operating system not supported by Apple or Microsoft, EONI will not work on your computer.  Drivers, patches and antivirus and other important software is generally not available for Windows 98 and older Microsoft operating systems.  Further, some hardware manufacturers are no longer making devices that are certified compatible with these operating systems.  Thus, EONI can no longer offer repairs or support for these older systems.

 

3. Currently supported operating systems.  Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, and Apple OS 10.2 through 10.5 are the most common operating systems in use on computers today.  EONI provides technical support for these desktop operating systems.  Microsoft still offers support for Windows 2000 Professional and Server products; thus, EONI continues to support those two operating systems as well.

 

4. Computers running operating systems other than officially supported Microsoft and Apple products.  While there are a number of other operating systems in use, most notably a number of Linux based operating systems, EONI does not offer technical support or computer repair services for these systems.  You may be able to use these with EONI Internet access, but you do so with no EONI technical support beyond providing you our available access information and settings that is generally available on the EONI web site; see: http://home.eoni.com/support.cfm.

 

We hope this explains our new policies regarding supported computer operating systems effective September 1, 2008.  EONI reserves the right to change these policies at any time.  Updates to EONI policies are posted to our web site: home.eoni.com/legal.  Thank you.

 

 

Kelly Mutch                                                     Jeff Crews

President & CEO                                             VP & Chief Technical Officer

More emails are being sent to EONI customers claiming to be from EONI and asking you to provide your password.

EONI will never  send you email asking for your password. 

If you have questions, please contact us by clicking here.

An email message with the subject line “your eoni webmail account verification mail” was received by some EONI customers on Saturday August 9th. This email asks for users to reply and provide their password. This email message is not from EONI and is fake. Do not reply to this email. If you have responded to this email please be sure and contact EONI immediately and ask us to assign a new password to all of your accounts immediately.

EONI will never ask you to reply to an email message and provide your password or other sensitive personal information.

Fake emails that try to get recipients to do things to compromise their security are called a "phish".  To learn more about phishing please click here this brief yet informative article.

The actual text of this particular fake message appears below:

-----Original Message-----
From: support [mailto:supporthelpdesk@live.com]
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 6:58 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: your eoni webmail account verification mail

 

 

 

 

Dear eoni.com Webmail User,

 

Due to maintainers on eoni webmail, you are required to enter the

Following information below for verification purpose.

 

First Name:

Last Name:

Password:

 

Maintainers confirmation mail will be sent to you ASAP.

http://webmail2.eoni.com/webmail/Login.aspx

We apologise for any inconveniences, but trust you understand that our

Primary concern is for our customers to be totally secure.

 

eoni support team

 

 

Today at 130PM we doubled our capacity for Internet access to Wallowa County.  Our technicians and customers have immediately remarked that Internet connections are more responsive.  We believe that with the new circuit capacity and specialized equipment we are using the performance will be better than ever.

The next project for EONI to complete in this area will be to expand our wireless service area to include Wallowa.

We appreciate the continuous patience and encouragement from our customers in Wallowa County. 

This morning from 530AM to 6AM we conducted an unscheduled maintenance to alleviate some periodic network congestion.  This maintenance was to upgrade core network (the central equipment) switching and routing to cause smoother traffic flow at peak times.

Normally we would conduct this type of maintenance between midnight and 6AM on a Wednesday (which is our regularly scheduled maintenance window).  However, we felt this upgrade was critical enough that we should proceed with this upgrade as soon as possible. 

This change will result in better performance when accessing the Internet.  Videos should load faster, iTunes store should work faster and your all around Internet experience should be improved.

More improvements and upgrades are planned as EONI prepares for another record year of growth!

Thanks for your patience. 

Normally EONI does not talk about future expansion plans because customers always want to know exactly when the new services will be available.  Sometimes there are delays in getting the new services ready, so we have preferred to delay announcements until services are ready to go.  However, we have had an extraordinary number of inquiries from Wallowa County over the past several months.  This article provides some details about our expansion plans.

First, EONI is working to upgrade the capacity between our Enterprise and La Grande sites.  Our Enterprise site is connected to our wired and wireless network sites throughout Enterprise and Joseph, and then connected back to La Grande.  The La Grande site is connected to the global Internet.  Initially, we are working to more than double the capacity we have to Enterprise.  With this upgrade in place we will be able to provide room for additional growth.  This upgrade will also bring with it major upgrades to our network routing equipment.  Currently, EONI does not anticipate making any changes to the wireless service plan speeds available to customers.

Second, EONI will expand our wireless service to serve Wallowa.  Many people in Wallowa have asked EONI to expand to this market.  After the capacity upgrade mentioned above is complete, the Wallowa expansion construction will commence.

Third, EONI plans to deploy high speed DSL (digital subscriber line) Internet service in Enterprise.  However, this will not become available until later this year, probably in the fourth quarter of 2008 (sometime between October and December).  DSL service works over your phone line and delivers high speed Internet and telephone service over a single phone line.  Plus you can use your phone to make voice calls and access the Internet at high speed at the same time!  EONI DSL will be offered in combination with telephone service provided by PriorityOne Telecommunications, Inc.  PriorityOne has been providing phone service in eastern Oregon since 2000.  You can keep your existing phone number, plus the phone service has more features and a very competitive price.  Your bill for telephone service and DSL service will be bundled on a single bill.  The DSL service does not work on all phone lines or in all areas of Enterprise.  However customers in town are more likely to have DSL available as the DSL service works within about 15,000 feet of downtown Enterprise.  Maximum DSL speeds have not yet been determined; however they will be substantially faster than the speeds we can deliver on our wireless network.  Pricing and more details will be announced as availability of the service gets closer.  Due to a number of complicated and regulatory reasons, currently EONI does not have plans to deploy DSL service other than in Enterprise.

Finally, EONI does not have current plans to expand our high speed services to Lostine or Imnaha.  If plans to expand there become available, we will announce those plans here on our web site.

The EONI speed test tool has been updated as of today to be more compatible with various versions of web browser software.  If you do not know what a web browser software is, this is software such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, Apple Safari, that you use on your computer to open web sites.

The new speed test system also is setup to automatically start the test rather than asking for you to click the "start test now" button we used prior to today.

The speed test tool is a very handy way of testing your Internet connection performance.

To find the speed test tool please visit eoni.com and click the "speed test" in the lower left hand corner of the page.

April 11, 2008

EONI wireless service has been restored in North Powder

Over the past 3 weeks EONI has been completing various steps required to move equipment into better positions to serve our customers in North Powder.  As of Noon Friday April 11, the EONI wireless service is in service.

We encourage our North Powder customers to use the wireless service and provide feedback to EONI by replying to this email message.  If we see that the service remains in service and stable we will resume billing for the EONI service effective May 1, 2008.

We appreciate your patience through this unprecedented winter weather and this unprecedented outage.

If you want further information, you can email us at answers@eoni.com or call our office at 962-7873.  Thank you.

Kelly Mutch, President
Jeff Crews, VP & Chief Technical Officer

This is a brief update on EONI's wireless Internet service for North Powder.  Very little has changed since the update we sent on February 8.  We had hoped that we would get a few days of good weather so that a work crew could be scheduled to adjust equipment on top of the water tower.  Safety is our primary concern; the conditions for working safely atop the tower offer little margin for error.  Thus far, the weather has been nearly totally unpredictable and uncooperative. 

While we cannot offer a definite time frame for complete restoration of the service, we have not given up.  Having said that, we are going to try to make some of the adjustments and repairs this week.  Also, if another trip to Mt. Fanny is required, we will make that trip as well, as conditions allow.

Saying more is honestly just repeating what we have previously said in earlier emails.  Our earlier messages are available by checking the EONI News and Announcements section located near the bottom of our web site (http://home.eoni.com). We appreciate your patience and support.  If you wish for further information, you can email us at answers@eoni.com or call our office at 962-7873.  Thank you. 

Kelly Mutch, President
Jeff Crews, VP & Chief Technical Officer

Email for eoni.com email accounts experienced delays in delivery between Saturday March 15 and Wednesday March 19.  The delays were caused by an immense increase in unsolicited email (spam) sent to eoni.com email systems.  The EONI systems were not able to keep up with the flow of messages.  This required human intervention at EONI to manage the email traffic to get the email flowing again.  During this time customers may have had some email destined for their eoni.com email address to be delayedin delivery to their in box or in some rare case the email was returned to the sender.  During this time outgoing email to non-eoni.com email addresses was delivered without delay.

EONI considers email to be a very crucial part of our service.  We have 6 servers dedicated to eoni.com email only (hosted domains use a separate group of servers).  We plan to add 2-3 additional servers to handle the increased load.

We have made adjustments to our monitoring and notification systems in response to this most recent situation.  The system changes will detect and escalate problems with the email system much sooner than previously.  Our monitoring systems actually send email test messages using the same systems our customer email uses.  Our systems time how long it takes for the message to be delivered.  We currently test the eoni.com email flow outgoing and flow incoming 5 different ways every 10 minutes.  If the delay is higher than 15 minutes the on call network engineer is notified.  This allows us to work to correct problems as quickly as possible with the goal to correct the problem before you notice any issues.

We appreciate your patience and support.

Please see this new link to the photos of the Feb 1, 2008 trip to Mt Fanny.

On Thursday at 8:13AM we lost power to the Mt Harris wireless site.  This site is used by EONI to provide service to our wireless customers in Elgin.  EONI has installed expanded battery systems at this site due to previous problems with extended power outages and the difficulty of accessing this mountain top site in winter weather.

This Mt Harris site also serves several major commercial radio companies as well.  Oregon Trail Electric said they reset the breaker Thursday, however this problem of the power outage continues.   Oregon Trail Electric has notified a radio station they plan to have a snow cat trip to inspect the power system this morning.  They estimated they would begin the trip about 10:30AM. 

EONI wireless service to Elgin is still in service due to the battery system we have in place.  EONI has the ability to monitor the utility and battery status remotely and our systems.  Our systems report the batteries may run out about 3PM today.  We may get more or less time from our batteries.  As soon as stable utility power is present our systems will switch back to utility power and begin the slow process (2-3 days) of recharging the series of batteries.

Hopefully Elgin wireless customer will see no outage and the utility power will be restored before our batteries are exhausted.

February 8, 2008

To: EONI Wireless Customers in Cove

Re: Status and credit for interrupted service

Beginning Saturday, January 26, 2008 EONI experienced a loss of our wireless Internet service to Cove.  Despite a number of interventions and network changes made in La Grande, we were unable to restore the service.  We suspected that the extreme winter conditions had caused either a large accumulation of ice or an equipment failure at the facilities on Mount Fanny..

The severity of the weather prevented a visit to Mount Fanny until Friday, February 1.
Our technicians found that the weather had caused significant equipment damage.  Fortunately, they were able to repair our facilities on this visit and service was restored by late that afternoon.  
Our Cove customers affected by this outage will receive a $10.50 credit to their accounts.  We thank you for your patience and support during this time.  If you have other questions, please let us know.  You can call our office at 962-7873 or email us at answers@eoni.com.  Thank you.

We have posted pictures and updates on our news and announcement page if you are interested in more details:
http://news.eoni.com/

Kelly Mutch, President
Jeff Crews, VP & Chief Technical Officer

To: EONI Wireless Customers in North Powder

This is a brief update on the situation with EONI's wireless Internet service for the North Powder area.  The service remains unstable.  The biggest issue affecting repairs remains the weather conditions.  EONI technicians made a trip up to Mt. Fanny last week and due to constraints of daylight, travel conditions and the weather on top of the mountain, their work was severely limited.  Safety while working in the austere environment there remains the first consideration. 

EONI does have other ongoing efforts trying to restore the service to a fully operational status.  We have some work to do in North Powder at the water tower that we will try to accomplish as soon as we can.  If another trip to Mt. Fanny is required, we will attempt that as well.  Once again, the weather must cooperate for this work to be done.  This winter has presented the most challenging conditions that we have had to face - ever. 

 
We can offer no definitive timeline for the service to be restored, but we want you to know that we have not given up and we are still working towards a resolution. We hope you will be patient with us.  We know that other choices for broadband service there are limited and can be more expensive.  However, if you cannot wait for us to finish restoring our wireless service, you may cancel your EONI wireless contract.  Should you choose to cancel, we need to have the opportunity to retrieve our equipment, including the inside wireless power supply and outside radio with antenna.  If you decide to hang in there while we continue working on this issue, billing for the account remains suspended and EONI will provide free complimentary dialup Internet access while we resolve the problem. 

If you have other questions, please let us know.  You can call our office at 962-7873 or email us at answers@eoni.com.  We will try to provide updates periodically via email and on our web site (http://home.eoni.com).  While we may not be the best at providing updates, as a small company we try to work on problems rather than talk about them.  We appreciate your ongoing patience and support.  Thank you.

Kelly Mutch, President
Jeff Crews, VP & Chief Technical Officer

On Saturday January 26, 2008 the wireless radio link from EONI La Grande to our Mt Fanny site (which serves Cove and North Powder EONI wireless customers) degraded to the point that service to customers was unusable.

We had seen extremely low (sub zero temperatures) earlier that week cause our equipment to stop working at this site, however the temperature was not that cold.  We waited for some of the extreme high wind, blowing snow and other adverse weather to pass and the service to Mt Fanny to restore.  Service did not restore by Sunday evening.  We tried some adjustments to the La Grande end, but no real improvement was realized.  We can receive a signal and can occasionally for very brief moments communicate with the Mt Fanny site but the signal is not strong enough to carry regular traffic.  Signal quality has continued to go down as days have passed.  We replaced our equipment on the La Grande end of the link to Mt Fanny and checked alignment, no change.  So we conferred with some other wireless Internet Service Providers (ISP) we know and the mostly likely cause for the outage was thought to be ice build-up on our antenna at Mt Fanny.  This makes some sense due to the increase in precipitation we have had this year over last year (this EONI Mt Fanny site was established in August 2006).  Further our Mt Harris site has not experienced degraded signal to this degree, however the antenna are smaller and there is more shielding from surrounding trees.  The Mt Fanny site is much more exposed.

Generally we have not blogged about problems as we did not want to air this laundry for the world, speak of internal processes, expose trade-secrets, etc, however we feel being open, honest and direct will help our customers to understand the situation directly.  We also responded to a request from the local newspaper The Observer on Tuesday and Mardi Ford wrote an article which appeared in last night's edition.

This morning we met up with Al and Emmett from Oregon Public Broadcasting's La Grande Engineering group.  We planned to follow them up to Cove and then ride in the snowcat with them to the Mt Fanny site where they planned to conduct regular maintenance activities.  However the day began with schools throughout the valley not starting as blowing snow reduced visibility and caused dangerous snow drifting conditions.  Undaunted, we headed out at 830AM while we listened to ODOT radio dispatch speaking lots of problem spots throughout the area with wrecks, closed roads, etc.  The road from Island City to Cove was closed.  We headed to Union at about 35 MPH and found the road from Cove to Union closed as well.  We waited for about 30 minutes in Union to see if the road would open.  ODOT said that one of the two lanes was barely open and the snow drifts were higher than the top of the snowcat (which was sitting atop a 3 foot trailer).  ODOT thought we might get in to Cove but might not be able to get back out when we were finished.  ODOT was very busy today and with some equipment not working they had their hands more than full.  So we headed for home and Al from OPB called us up and we plan to try again tomorrow morning.  As weather conditions change rapidly we will not know until tomorrow if we can get up to Mt Fanny. 

We truly understand that this is a real problem for our customers.  We encourage you to keep a backup land line in place and contact our office to get a free backup dialup account to use until the service is functioning normally.

Please, stay tuned for more updates.

Pictures from today are here.
Sorry I did not take pictures of the road closure blockades.

Recently we have had two of our technicians announce that their spouse has taken a job offer out of the area.  So, we have two additional positions open.  If you are interested in learning more, head on over to our job info page.

EONI has an employment opportunity available.  For more details click here.
   more »

1. EONI Holiday Closure

EONI takes this opportunity to say thank you for choosing EONI for your Internet services.  We truly appreciate your business and wish you and yours a very Happy Holiday season.

Our retail store, business office and technical support will be closed for 2 days on
December 24 and on December 25.  We will also be closed on January 1, 2008.

---
2. Update policies

EONI has updated our terms and conditions pages.  Please take a moment to re-familiarize yourself with our policies that apply to your use of EONI services by visiting this link:

http://home.eoni.com/legal/

---

Thanks for your business.

Jeff Crews, Vice-President
Kelly Mutch, President.

On November 30, 2007 Travis Gray and I traveled along with the OPB La Grande engineering group in trip up to Mt Fanny.  The purpose of this journey was to upgrade some radio equipment to provide improved service to North Powder and to upgrade the server used for customer IP connections in Cove.

We learned that regular nylon cable ties do not work at low temperatures and the catch inside easily breaks off rendering the tie toothless and useless.

Travis Gray took most of the pictures of this visit.

Being safe on with computers and the Internet is important, but for many the way to be safe is challenging to understand. 

Recently I found in the La Grande Public Library a great book from Cisco Press titled: Home Networking Security Simplified by Jim Doherty and Neil Anderson.  This book does an excellent job helping people become more secure with their computers and the Internet.  Lots of pictures, illustrations and examples of why you need to be concerned are included throughout this 206 page text (again it has lots of pictures). 

The book is geared towards users of Windows XP and has coverage for Linksys routers (this is a Cisco Press book).  The book includes coverage for wireless networks (see note below), virus, spyware, choosing good passwords and other highly useful topics. 

If you use a wireless connection at your home or office, please make sure you are not using WEP (Wired Equivalent Protocol).  In the past few months lots of articles and software have been written that demonstrate how you can break into a wireless network using WEP in less than 60 seconds using common computers and freely available software.  It is actually easier to break your network open than for a legitimate user to type in your WEP key.  So, the take away here, is don't use WEP and use WPA instead.  For assistance, please check with the manufacturer of your wireless equipment to be sure the hardware and software you have supports WPA or can be updated to support WPA.   Since this book was published in July 2006 it does not tell you to avoid using WEP.  Aside from that, the rest of the content is pretty useful.

Another good resource for security tips is the EONI SafetyZone.

Next steps: 
- Check your local book seller as this is a great text to to purchase and have on hand.
- Check your local library or see if interlibrary loan is available.
- Or you can purchase a copy online by clicking the link below:

North Powder now has a real option for super-fast, always-on Internet service.  EONI has brought high speed wireless service to North Powder!

Prior to now, most people in North Powder have been limited to dialup Internet access.  With EONI high speed Internet there are no more slow dial up connections that tie up and require a phone line!  The ability to truly work from home is now a viable option.  Instant access to web sites, email and other services are just a click away.  The super fast and affordable Internet is now a realty in North Powder!

EONI delivers the new Internet service to the City of North Powder water tower from our Mt Fanny site installed last summer. 

 

EONI has served Northeast Oregon since 1996.  EONI is the region's largest locally owned and managed Internet service provider, serving thousands of high speed customers. 

To see some photos from this project click here.

For more information about the service including pricing and the ability to order online please click here.

Or call us at 541-962-7873 or 800-785-7873 and you will always talk to someone right here and not someone in a far away land.

On March 1, 2007, changes to Minimum System Requirements for EONI broadband (Wireless and DSL) customers will go into effect.   more »