Greetings from T-One!

While we normally try to keep most news letters light in nature, and even humorous at times, this is a special news update that is VERY serious in nature. For the benefit of your own on-line usage, our T-One network, and the entire Internet, PLEASE read it all, and let us know if you have any questions.

While I am sure most of you have heard about the "Blaster" worm virus that hit the Internet around the middle of August (and may have even experienced it), there is another worm virus which was released about the same time that, sad to say, has not gained as much media attention. This is the W32.Welchia (also known as the Nachi worm) which is raising holy havoc with users all over the net.

So why this email you ask? Well, the bottom line is that we are estimating (very unscientific estimate) that somewhere around 15% of our customers are infected with this virus. This is placing undue load on the network. It is causing a tremendous amount of bandwidth usage. It is causing us to receive abuse complaints from sites all over the Internet. And probably most important of all, it is drastically hampering Internet usage for each and every customer who has been infected with it. ARE YOU ONE OF THEM?

In an attempt to find out, and assist you if you are, we tried to do some logging of virus activity on our Network over this past weekend. With the volume of data being generated from virus laden machines, this was an exercise in futility and brought our logging server right to it's knees within just a very short period of time (over 119,000 entries in less than 1/2 hour). So, at this point we really have no choice but to ask for YOUR assistance, and hope that you will take it upon yourselves to make sure your computer is virus free.

Some initial steps you can use to determine if you are infected, would be to watch your modem lights on your computer when you are on-line. Does one of them seem to stay on solid (even when you are not surfing)? If so, a pretty good bet your machine has been infected. Do you seem to be running much slower on the Internet than you used to? Again, another good indicator that you have been infected. Of course the virus can also be detected by any one of the Anti-Virus programs. But you MUST have up to date definition files for the program for it to alert you.

Without getting real technical, or detailed, in effect what your machine is doing is scanning other machines all over the world to try to find another one to infect. This eats up a lot of the bandwidth you have available and it effects not only our network, but the Internet as a whole.

In closing, PLEASE check your computer in one way or another to determine if you have this virus. Additional information can be found on the Norton anti-virus site at http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.welchia.worm.htm l or on McAfee's site at http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=100559

If the virus is found, you will need to either follow the steps outlined by the Anti-Virus software you use, or if unfamiliar with following these procedures, you may need to inlist the help of your favorite computer technician.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation on this VERY important matter.

Sincerely,

Lyle