Chile Forum

There will be server upgrades and outages between 11 pm the 24th of April and 6 AM the 25 th of April Santiago time. This may result in outages in parts of the World of up to 48 hours. Most users should not experience anything but a brief problem connecting for a few mins.

Any problems you find after, please post here or PM me directly.

If you have problems connecting through the forum, please contact me through allsouthernchile.com contact page.

Thanks for all the support you have given us.

think we are ok

Sorry about the delay in getting the server upgraded. I had a bit of disagreement with the database. All should be working now.

So, what happened?

This forum really started out as an experiment. I was fully prepared to shut it down after a month or two if it did not get sufficient users.

Well, guess I was wrong. So, the forum has grown in both the amount of data and bandwidth it uses and now we need to plan for future growth. So, that is what this move was all about.

For the technically curious, we moved to a new hosting provider. Our former host was shutting down, and we are also in desperate need of more reliable and faster servers.

We moved to a host with multiple data centers around the World, and is situated on the US backbone. It also provides battery and electric generator backups.

So, the move was all your fault for making allchile.net such a hit (literally lots and lots of hits). Thanks for the support, and we hope to keep this going for many years to come.

As Chile grows in popularity, so will allchile.net.

Hello!

Ran into a few links that I couldn't access for some reason while doing my reading.

http://www.allchile.net/chileforum/viewtopic.php?t=47
http://www.allchile.net/chileforum/viewtopic.php?t=30
http://www.allchile.net/chileforum/viewtopic.php?t=26

I was able to get those pages, but there may be some problems from one part of the internet to the next.

There may be some problems with the domain name for up to 48 hours as servers around the world update their catch and DNS records.

If you still have problems with them after 48 hours, please report.

For everyone on the VTR cable network in Chile (you likely can not see this), it will be 48 hours before they update their global DNS records. We are going to send complaints to the admins and see if we can get them to refresh earlier.

I'm pretty sure it has to do with the upgrade recently....I can't seem to find any clean undrwear, so if you could let me know where to find them, that would be great...I'm also missing a blue button up shirt....and my leg hurts a little just since all this upgrade stuff started...let me know and thanks


p.





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I think I found them.

The database was complaining of duplicate key entry for post_Id=1 (i.e. Server Query language for 'El Puelche's clean underwear is filed in the dirty underwear drawer, please remove them before I &*% all over your forum ') I think I fixed it.

I have noticed a great deal of Chile specific IT problems. So, I think I am going to open a little thread to offer some tech advice.

I know, there are lots of IT forums out there; but, there are also a lot of problems that are IT specific to Chile.

So, I think I will kick this off, and covert this thread in to some free support for our users. I can not promise anything (my own IT todo list is fairly long), but I might be able to toss a solution or two to your problems.

I also know there are a few guys lurking around the forum that have some experience with computers and networks, and perhaps they will drop some help also to the less computer inclined.

Here is my first advice. If you are in Chile, and must deal with VTR cable for your internet connection be aware that they suck. Well, just don't ask them to fix their own network, monkey with the cables, or basically do anything. They are fine most of the time. Just when there is a problem with their network, do not complain too much to the wrong people or they will try to fix it (badly). You should a apply a 'if it works, don't fix it policy to them'.

That said, if you must use VTR, this is a work around. This may help people anywhere in the World with their own ISP.

Go to http://www.opendns.com, and follow their instructions for using their DNS server instead of your Internet Service Providers (ISP) default server.

You may be surprised to find out that your internet connection is much faster than it seems because of the time it takes to look up the domain name of a server.

For example, say you have 1 mbs connection. Great it takes you say 100ms or less to connect to a site. You are flying on the internet. Well, perhaps.

However, If it takes you 400ms for your ISP to return the IP address when you type "www.allsouthernchile.com", then your total time to connect has been cut to at least 25% of the time. It is like opening a phone book that is 5 years old for a city, or opening the phone book for this year to find a number for a business (yes, the internet changes that fast). Your perceived speed will be greatly increased.

Today, in our case, I am using VTR. I can not see my own websites with VTR's database because the domain name servers only update once every 48 hours. They can see my sites in China, but not in southern Chile (i tested this). Even my .cl domains that I manage can not be seen for more than 48 hours in Chile on the VTR network when I change them.

We have complained before to them about this, and it still has not resulted in anything but them toying with their servers and making it worse. We will try again however.

so, I am forced to use a different domain name server to use this site tonight. Kind of ironic that http://www.allsouthernchile.com and other all chile sites can not be seen from most everywhere in southern Chile or Chile for a vast number of internet users.

There has been reports of PM problems. I think I have fixed it. feel free to PM me to test for the next 24 hours. If it does not work, please post here or email me through one of the other sites.

I found the problem with posting new topics. I believe it is fixed. Thanks.

Please try again, and report if it is not working.

Actually Telefonica/Terra hasn't been too bad in the five years I've used them for banda ancha in two locales (ADSL in Sanitago Centro and now on the coast near San Antonio).

There are maintenance type outages every month and a half or so that range from half an hour to three of four hours (or when I wake up). The biggest problem was a 5 day outage where they had to send a tech out to prove to themselves that what I was saying all along (that the problem was on their end) was in fact correct.

As admin pointed out, there are occasional DNS problems that can be somewhat solved by loading/using your own specified DNS servers.

Problem in general with Chile ISPs, all email addresses you receive under their domains appear to be worthless as many US ISPs automatically block them because of past spam problems.

-- a slightly buzzed eeuu nikkei expat reporting from the Admirals Club lounge in EZE waiting for the plane to DFW

I have used VTR and setup VTR connections from about a dozen locations around Chile in 5 years. I have great faith in their ability to screw it up 100% time. I have never had a working connection from them installed that took less than 7 days and visits from at least 4 techies, and a dozen phone calls to the main office. It always involves at least two or three mid-level to high level IT managers directly.

I have installed a few ASDL connections in Chile that were not bad. I don't recall having a problem with the 3 or 4 telefonica dsl connections I had in Santiago about 5 years ago.

I have had problems with the telefonica del sur around Futa and Chaiten. As I understand they are owned by VTR, and thus have a lot of the same problems. Considering how remote Futa is, I consider it a small miracle that there is broadband internet at all. So, I cut them some slack considering what they are up against logistically. The mountains are less of problem than having VTR to be the upstream service provider.

Hi!

I don't know about anyone else but I couldn't get in at all until not too long ago. It was as if allchile.net no longer existed.

Oh well... glad it's back up and running!

Many thanks!

sorry, about that there has been some server tweaks required to get things back to normal.

The count:
Well, we have an official count I believe on the number of active users. It looks like that the total of active users is around 80-90 on the allchile forum as of may 2007.

On one hand I am a little disappointed by that number, because I dropped about 4,000 users that have never posted. Most are simply automated spammers ( about 99% ). There may be a few real people that registered, but never posted. To them I apologize, please feel free to register again. This should only happen about once a year for new members that have never posted.

On the other hand, considering how new this forum is (about 6 months), how small the population of Chile is, and how few people are out there that both speak English and have an interest in Chile with and the time to invest in a forum like this, we are doing very very good.

Plus add all the other forums on the subject of Chile out on the Internet, we are moving along. It is those core founding members that make great forums.

Considering that about 1,400 post are created by less than 80 members, means that we have that the core of dedicated founding users means that I believe we will make it as a viable forum on the Internet. The more Chile grows, the more we will grow.

We have also acquired about 50% of our users in just 2007. The rate is picking up. Please tell your friends.

I also believe that we are the only forum that this dedicated to only Chile, with this many members. There are other forums, but they are dedicated to hundred and sometimes thousands of other subjects under one domain.

Financial report:
The good news is we can afford via our other business activities and projects, advertising, and such to not be too terribly concerned about the money this forum creates. We simply enjoy running it and we enjoy Chile. In that respect Yahoo, Google, and so on can not compete. We will keep on running the forum as long as we can, and that looks like it will be a long time to come.

Cheers,
your admin