ICS Advanced Technologies is now moving ahead at full speed with development of the new IBIS login portal.

Based on customer feedback, the new system will include full support for a wider range of web browsers including the PS3, Nintendo Wii, and mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The signup system will also undergo a significant update with personal account and upgrade management features.

Look for these features and more coming to the IBIS login portal by August 1st.

As always, we are here to serve you.

I know that it seems that I am writing an article about an outage all too often.

However, I think an explanation of our outage on Monday needs to happen.

The problem was that a worker in the building that contains the equipment that powers our Internet distribution system simply cut power to all of our equipment without explanation or warning.

We apologize for the outage and did be assured that we did everything in our power to get the service back up as soon as possible.

We have been assured by the property owner that a similar situation will not happen in the future.

Thank you for your understanding.

Our upstream provider has planned a sort outage at 3:00 AM for tomorrow, May 15th for approximately 15 minutes. To provide more reliable service to us, they need to change out a piece of equipment in their central office.

While ICS has no direct control over the duration of this outage, we are told it will be between 15 and 30 minutes. We hope this does not cause you a great deal of inconvenience. They originally wanted to do it at midnight, but we insisted that they wait until 3:00 AM to minimize the effect on our clients.

Thank you for your understanding

As the ISU semester draws to a close, the ICS team would like to wish all students good luck on their final exams and projects. It is amazing how another school year has flown by.

To all of those students graduating, we would like to wish you well in your future endeavors. For those students who will be returning to school for additional semesters, we look forward to serving you in the future.

With spring already here and summer rapidly approaching, ICS will be continuing our relentless endeavor to strengthen our Internet Network. We have several new Internet links slated to be completed this summer as well as continued improvements to all parts of ICS. As always, you can check back to this hotspot page for the latest updates.

If you are moving out at the end of the year, and have a DirecTV account in your apartment, don’t forget that you can transfer your account to your new place of residence, whether that new residence is a new apartment or a private home.

As always we are here to serve you.

I wanted to send you all an explanation of the outage that occurred last night for approximately four hours. While we apologize for the obvious inconvenience this caused all of you, the outage was caused by a catastrophic failure in the Qwest central office that controls all QMOE (Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet) circuits in the central Iowa area and NOT in any equipment of resource over which ICS has direct control.

Our main Internet connection is provided via a GigE Ethernet connection via QMOE. Therefore, our connection was down until Qwest was able to repair the problem at approximately 10:50 PM last night.

Also to those of you who were frustrated that you could not reach our Technical Support Department: We were answering as many of your calls as we could, but please understand we have thousands of people on our service, and only 24 phone lines. While we would have liked to have answered each and every call, the volume of calls made that impossible. Please understand that we are the first to know when we have a problem, as every connection on our network is monitored. An alarm goes off and support people are called immediately whenever an outage occurs, so while you may not be able to get through and talk to someone, we are aware of the problem and are working on it.

Our Support Team is working with the Qwest engineers to come up with a plan to prevent another outage of this magnitude and duration from happening in the future.

In closing, I want to again stress how seriously ICS takes any outage of service to any customer and that we know and understand the tremendous inconvenience this caused all of you, particularly for all you students during dead week .

We strive each and every day to be the best Internet Service Provider in the Multi Dwelling industry and will continue to do everything in our power to prevent future outages.

No new network news really, but for those of you that are students, I just want to wish you all good luck on your finals.

I also want to thank you all for being our customers. I know many of you are our customers simply because your property manager buys services from us, but we have enjoyed working with all of you this year, and hope we have the opportunity to serve you next year as well.

If you are moving out at the end of the year, and have a DirecTV account in your apartment, don’t forget that you can transfer your account to your new place of residence, whether that new residence is a new apartment or a private home.

Well, that’s all for now. Until next time,

ICS outage last night:

Please accept our sincere apology for the outage that occurred last night.

We experienced a catastrophic equipment failure at the core of our network that lasted approximately three hours and affected most of our customers.

The good news was that ICS has spare components for virtually all key components of our network, but because it happened after hours, it still took several hours to get people on site to fix it.

We are taking steps to minimize the down time of any future failures and will do everything in our power to keep an outage like this happening again.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this outage caused you.

Now that spring has sprung, get outside and check out the city WIFI hotspots powered by ICS Internet. They are located at the Hunziker sports complex, Brookside Park, Tom Evans (downtown Ames by Lucullans Italian Grill) and Campus Town Court in Campustown.

Your ICS logon account already works any city public WIFI location.

In fact, your ICS login works at ANY location served by the ICS network. So, if you bring your laptop to a friend’s apartment in another ICS served building you can just login, even if it is a different property manager! Also note that if you have purchased a speed upgrade, that speed travels with you to any ICS location, based on available bandwidth at that location.

We are continuing our network build out and will inform each complex as we complete the upgrades in your area of the city.

In the next few days, you will be seeing a new look to your Internet login page. We hope you find it more user friendly and more informative. We are rolling it out complex by complex, as each one needs to be customized a little for each property.

There is a new FAQ link on the page to answer the questions that our support team is most frequently asked . Also, check out the new campus cam link on the new page when you get it. It’s pretty cool right now, but we plan to install a much better camera in the near future. Who knows, we may even let you point, tilt, and zoom it.

Also, we will be changing the ICS homepage, www.ics-llc.net to be more attractive, informative, and useful. We are excited about the new look we are bringing to our company and hope you find it useful and informative.

Our next network improvement project is to upgrade all of the links on and around Hyland Ave. The current equipment in that area is being pressed to its limits to keep up during periods of peak demand. That project is in the planning and scheduling phase. As I write this, the new equipment is being ordered and deployment is being planned. We will, of course, replace the most stressed links first. I would expect the project to be completed within a month or so.

Till next time,

Jim Van Dyke, President
ICS Advances Technologies

Hope you all had a joyous holiday and great semester break.

I think it actually feels good to get back at it. Some of you are looking at this message on a page with a whole new look and upgraded features. The rest of you soon will be.

You will notice a cleaner look and increased functionality. We look forward to serving you in the coming year, and want to be the first to know if you are having any problems with your Internet connection.

Jim Van Dyke, President
ICS Advances Technologies