| The Maintenance Window
In order to minimize any disruption in service Iowa Telecom performs any maintenance activity that may negatively impact service during a set Maintenance Window. This window is defined as being between the hours of 12:00 AM and 7:00 AM Monday through Sunday 365 days a year.
Maintenance can be system-wide or only affect a certain portion of the network or users of certain services. It can also range from a service or network being 'down hard' for a period of several hours (quite rare) to a service or network being interrupted only intermittently for a few minutes at a time (more often the case).
In all instances, great pains are taken to minimize the scope and duration of any service interruptions that may occur due to maintenance activity.
Maintenance Notifications
When maintenance that may impact service is scheduled, Iowa Telecom will make efforts to notify the potentially affected users ahead of time to assist in planning use of Internet resources during that period. This is done by two main channels of communication - direct Maintenance Notification e-mails to the potentially affected users; and the Iowa Telecom Data Services What's New? page.
E-mail Notifications
E-mail notifications of upcoming maintenance activity are sent out to the users most likely to experience adverse affects to their Internet services if they are attempting to use them during the maintenance period. These messages will be sent only to the user's IowaTelecom.net account. Users cannot 'opt out' of these notifications. In the case of certain maintenance activity, only a subset of users will receive this notification (i.e.: If work is being done that will only affect a certain town, only users in that town would be notified.)
The e-mail will contain the following information:
- The date the maintenance will occur
- The service(s) or network(s) likely to be affected
- Whether those services will likely be affected intermittently or for some longer duration
If you receive a Maintenance Notification and have questions about it, please contact Iowa Telecom Internet Technical Support.
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