IP change coming

Owing to a number of factors (**), I am completely overhauling my network for the first time in 8 years (really 12 years -- yow, have I been doing this that long? -- though the changes I did when I switched away from Covad/IINet back in 2004 were relatively minor compared to what I'm doing now).

The main user-visible thing is that various server IPs, including LambdaMOO's are going to change and, at the very least, your connection will drop when I throw the switch. There will also be some number of minutes of downtime while I futz with the cables or if I have to do unexpected extra debugging on the new firewall. Once that's done, assuming a just world, your DNS should be keeping up with the changes, so that all you'll have to do is reconnect and things will Just Work.

Admittedly, if I manage to do this without taking the server down, I may feel compelled to do a server reboot some time afterwards just to make sure things will continue working the next time the power goes out. We'll see how this goes.

(**) Fafner, my vintage-1998 Pentium box that boots off of a floppy that I use for a firewall is getting harder to maintain now that I no longer have any other working machines that possess a floppy drive. And with djbdns no longer being maintained and not keeping up with the various load-balancing/cloud-whatever-bullshit games that akamai and friends are playing, I need a new DNS server. And I also needed more IP addresses, which Megapath (nee Speakeasy) appears to have finally come through with --- only took them a month to figure out how to do it; evidently, the post-merger layoff of the Speakeasy people took place a little too quickly and there are now various chunks of network infrastructure they don't fully understand anymore and I'm on one of them. bleah -- and because what I'm getting is a completely new block that has to be routed via my current address, I have to completely redo how my DMZ works. So...