My office is moving to a new location. Any kind of move results in some discontinuity in process, but having handled data centre moves on a fairly regular basis in a previous professional life, the transition grief can be managed. In this move, however, an unexpected “challenge” presented itself.
The ISP for the old address has no service to the new address. I’m not completely convinced that the provider actually knows that they can’t provide the new site because they actually have fiber at the demark, but they are adamant that internet is a no go. They did offer to deploy a wireless internet solution which would have data charges per GB for any monthly traffic beyond 15GB. As the office bandwidth regularly falls in the 5GB/day range, I felt that a $3,000 monthly data bill was a bit too much like a throwback to the 1990s. Back in those days, a leased data circuit providing about 19,200bps throughput fell in this price range.
Anyway, a new “upgraded” service from an alternate provider is in order. This isn’t a big deal except for a single factor….a small number of email addresses were those provided by the old ISP — these of a user@isprovider.net format.
As a workaround, a subscription to an “email only” service from the old provider at a cost of approximately $50/month is needed and all old email addresses will be forwarded to a newly purchased domain. Technically, not a big deal. Logistically, a royal PITA. On the to-do list:
- Set up new email addresses in the new domain for each of the old ones
- Enable forwarding of each old address to the new domain
- Change each user’s devices to reference the new domain addresses
- Forward notices to everyone who had the old addresses to let them know about the change.
- Update all online services which have account contact information (including user IDs) referencing the isprovider.net addresses to reflect the new addresses.
Definitely not a show stopper, but certainly not convenient.
This made me think about my personal email addresses…I have had a isprovider.net email address for more than 15 years, and email list subscriptions, utility accounts, web forums, online retail accounts know this address. It looks like it’s time to start changing those in case I want faster home internet speeds!
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