I have news for those who make use of the redirective domain of bnls.dementedminds.net.

[u]For those who prefer a short and sweet/simple notice:[/u]

The service is now 100% automated, and no longer manually updated.

[u]For those who like details:[/u]

I originally was updating the domain to redirect to the next available bnls system manually, as a result, if a server went down, there'd be a considerable delay before I found out about it being down, and updated it to redirect to another server. This was tedious, and also annoying for people who made use of the domain.

But now, that should be no longer an issue. I've coded a script that'll automate the entire process. When a server goes down, the dementedminds.net server will identify the loss and automatically seek out the next available bnls server. Once one is found, it updates the DNS.

If you notice that the bnls.dementedminds.net redirector service isn't working for you, try the following troubleshooting steps (applicable for windows, if anyone can port those steps to the mac/*nix distros, feel free:

1) Go into the command prompt, and type: ipconfig /flushdns

That should solve the problem, Windows tends to cache the DNS for servers recently accessed, so when the DNS is flushed, Windows will then query for the new DNS information.

2) If that still doesn't work, check the JBLS website for the status of the servers:

- http://www.jbls.org

3) If the JBLS website indicates that the following servers are down:

- valhallalegends.com
- bnls.valhallalegends.com
- jbls.org
- hdx.jbls.org

Then that pretty much means the redirector service ran out of alternate servers to redirect to. As soon as one of those alternate servers come back up, the redirector service will recognize it, and automatically redirect to that corresponding server.

4) If the JBLS website indicates that one or more of the previously mentioned servers are up, give the bnls.dementedminds.net redirector service some time -- the service does a query every half hour to check the status of the servers, and as soon as it realizes the current server it has been redirecting to is down, it'll automatically seek out an alternate server and divert the flow to that server.

5) If even after a half hour, bnls.dementedminds.net STILL isn't working (shouldn't ever happen, but you never know!), PM me and I'll check into it ASAP.

Hopefully the automated redirector service will help alleviate downtime of bots everywhere when a server goes down.

P.S.

An user of bnls.dementedminds.net asked me about pings being redirected. Originally, pings were [u]NOT[/u] redirected, only traffic for the BNLS ports were. But when he queried me about it, I thought it was a quite good idea, and have re-configured my server to from now on redirect all incoming pings to the server it is redirecting to. So in other words, all responses you receive from your pings to the bnls.dementedminds.net server are from the server it's redirecting to. Example:

[code]C:\Documents and Settings\Owner>ping bnls.dementedminds.net

Pinging bnls.valhallalegends.com [64.183.189.104] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.183.189.104: bytes=32 time=106ms TTL=108
Reply from 64.183.189.104: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=108
Reply from 64.183.189.104: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=108
Reply from 64.183.189.104: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=108

Ping statistics for 64.183.189.104:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 96ms, Maximum = 106ms, Average = 100ms[/code]

P.S.S. Or you can look at my forum signature, which includes the server status information. :)

Enjoy.  :)