* Welcome
* New Lines
* Network News
* Domain Name License Renewals Warning
* Games News
* STD Charges
* Online Payment Method
* Customise Your Homepage

Welcome

It has again been a busy beginning to the New Year for everyone here at iiNet. We have successfully launched our wholly owned and much anticipated telecommunications provider, Chime Communications. This launch is the culmination of 12 months planning and hard work by many of our network staff. Congratulations people! We would like to wish all of our clients a happy Chinese New Year and hope that the Year of the Snake will be a happy and prosperous year for you.

New Lines

During the month of February, 4000 new dial-in lines will be added to our main Perth number, 6265 0000. This doubles the capacity on that number, offering everyone longer times online to enjoy the Internet.

Network News

This month iiNet will be moving its core routing over to the new network. This will improve performance of the network and provide better back up in case of faults.

At the end of February, iiNet will be trialing a new system that will differentiate between local and non-local traffic. "Local traffic" is any data transferred between your computer and an iiNet service that is in the same city as you, such as a games server or local web site. Assuming that this all goes well, we expect to exclude truly local traffic from the volume totals for Explorer and Voyager customers.

New tools for clients to use to monitor their downloads are being developed and will be released as soon as they become available.

Domain Name License Renewal Warning

A number of our customers have recently received a letter about their domain name. This letter is usually phrased as a warning that their domain name is about to expire, but if they send money, they'll be saved. In some cases, an actual invoice has been sent requesting payment be sent immediately or the domain name will be deregistered.

The ACCC and the Australian Domain Authority have released a consumer warning about this practice, which you can read at:

http://www.auda.org.au/alert_renewal.html

If you are paying iiNet for your domain, then you will only ever receive an Invoice from us. If you get a letter like this, please just forward it (unpaid!) to us and we'll deal with it.

Games News

As the new games network has taken over most of the load of the games in Perth, iiNet Games department has been able to focus on new projects. A new mod for Halflife has come out called "Day of Defeat". iiNet has a test server up for this new game at hlmod.iinet.net.au. If you liked the movie "Saving Private Ryan" then this game is most likely for you.

As a result of feedback from our Bunbury clients, Bunbury now has it's own dedicated game server. The latency that Bunbury users had been experiencing while their games traffic went to Perth and back is now a thing of the past. A localised server running all the latest games is now ready to accept connections. Check out our games web page for address details.

http://iinet.net.au/games

STD Charges

Recently, one of our customers moved house and was very distressed to receive a most unwanted housewarming gift from Telstra, a telephone bill of over $1000. The customer had kept dialling their old iiNet point of presence and been charge STD rates for the month.

If you move house, it is vitally important that you check that the phone number you are dialling is correct for your new location.

This is obvious if you move from Perth to Bunbury, but you will also get burnt if you move one suburb from (say) Quinns Rock to Jindalee, or from Kwinana into Rockingham. Because this crosses a Telstra local call zone, suddenly, your connection to the Internet becomes a long distance call.

If this does happen, iiNet won't pay your phone bill. This may sound hard, especially when you're stuck with a massive bill, but checking that you're dialing the right number is really your responsibility.

So whenever you move, please take the time to contact our help desk and ask for a new telephone number!

Online Payment Method

Our new bill payment tool is proving quite popular! If you would like to pay an outstanding invoice you can now point your browser to:

https://billpay.iinet.net.au/

This URL takes you through to our bill payment gateway that utilises encrypted connections so that you may securely pay online. This page is also accessible from our homepage as a link under the Account Tools section.

You may preview the contents of any outstanding invoices before choosing which to pay. You may pay any of your outstanding invoices online using Visa, Mastercard, BankCard, AMEX or Diners card.

Customise Your Homepage

Did you know that iiNet's home page, found at: http://www.iinet.net.au/ can be tailored to display a range of services not shown on the default homepage?

You can click on the "Redesign my homepage" link at the bottom of iiNet's homepage button to login. After authentication, you will be presented with a range of services including 1/2 hourly updated articles from numerous websites, statistics from iiNet servers and daily quotes.

Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter, we hope that it will have been of value to you.

Jody Morris, Glen Lewis, Debbie Wilson, Michael Malone, Nathan Thomas and Kim Davies created this newsletter.