The following are the most recent developments on the Malawi  SDNP Internet network. If you need more details and you cannot find these details on this website, you may contact Malawi SDNP using the contact information on our website

25 July 2011: MTL Fault on 01874979 SDNP main helpdesk and support line

10 March 2011: SDNP announces maintenance on its Blantyre LAN to take place on 13 March 2011 6am-12noon

15 August 2008: Request for quotation for VSAT equipment for SDNP Mzuzu station

05 June 2008: Outage Notice: ESCOM power interruption: 6 June 2008, 8:00 am to 5:00pm, details available here

22 February 2008: Apologies - Power Outage again - 22-2-08 click here for details

9 February 2008: Apologies - Power Outage - 9-2-08 click here for details

31 January 2008: VSAT MAINTENANCE COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY click here for details

20 and 27 January 2008: SCHEDULED VSAT MAINTENANCE click here for details

19 June 2006: Malawi SDNP Telephone numbers have been changed from 0167.... format to 0187... format click here for details

6 June 2006: VSAT Upgrade: All Done: click here for details

13 April 2006: MZUZU Node now available - dial a Mzuzu number and connect ... (01) 331 900 ... click here for details

16 October 2004: >Malawi SDNP would like to sincerely apologise to its valued clients for the service outage of more than 8 hours from around 2pm on 15 October 2004. Deatils available here

10 October 2004: Connection Changes, Server Changes and Upgrades: With the aim to improve Internet services, the Malawi Sustainable Development Network Programme, Malawi SDNP, will carry out a number of activities and changes effective on 16 October 2004 as detailed here. Please make sure that you make the necessary changes on your set-up, as outlined here, in order to connect and use our services without any problems.

17-18 June 2004: Maintenance Activity: The high speed connection, via satellite, from Malawi SDNP to the global Internet will be going through maintenance by our upstream VSAT connection provider, Verestar, during the following times:

Primary Dates: 17-June-2004 19:00 PM - 17-June-2004 21:00 PM Malawi Time - No DownTime Experienced
Primary Dates GMT: 17-June-2004 17:00 PM - 17-June-2004 19:00 PM GMT - No DownTime Experienced
Backout Dates: 18-June-2004 19:00 PM - 18-June-2004 21:00 PM Malawi Time - No DownTime Experienced
Backout Dates GMT: 18-June-2004 17:00 PM - 18-June-2004 19:00 PM GMT - No DownTime Experienced
Location of Maintenance: Leuk, Switzerland

Summary Description of Maintenance: Engineers at Verestar's Leuk earth station must replace a faulty optical IFL cable that affects all services on the T-10 vertical transponder on the satellite. This may break the Malawi SDNP connection on this VSAT connection.

Customer Impact: Maintenance window has been scheduled for two hours, but the actual impact and downtime is not expected to exceed 30 minutes.

If you have any questions or concerns about this network maintenance advisement, please call the Malawi SDNP Technical Support at +265-(0)-1674979 for assistance. If you have any changes in the personnel contacts for these maintenance advisements, please also communicate those changes to our Technical Support. DNS operations for the .mw ccTLD domains will not be affected by this activity as our able secondaries will take care of resolutions at this time. However, access to the .mw ccTLD Registry may be affected.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this will cause you and your customers.

21 November 2003: SDNP Lilongwe Internet node is NOW functional, VSAT now fully operational, in Lilongwe, at Kamuzu College of Nursing near the Lilongwe Central Hospital

01 July 2003 Malawi SDNP has upgraded its Internet bandwidth via VSAT to 1536 kbps or 1.5Mbps from 28 June 2003. This is in response to rising demand from clients.

31 July 2002 Malawi SDNP has increased the number of dial-in lines. This is in response to rising demand from clients for dial-in services and to avoid clients getting the busy signal on telephone dial-in.

4 July 2002 Malawi SDNP has upgraded its Internet bandwidth via VSAT to 1000 kbps or 1Mbps from 4 July 2002. This is in response to rising demand from clients.

15 February 2002 Malawi SDNP has upgraded its Internet bandwidth to 512 kbps from 15 February 2002. This is in response to rising demand from clients. The upgrading of the Internet bandwidth is now much easier to carry out in line with demand following the installation of a direct satellite link using our own full duplex VSAT. See details on the VSAT below. We are now working on increasing the number of dial-in lines to avoid a busy signal..

17 October 2001 The VSAT has now been installed and is fully operational. Details are available here.

7 August 2001 Malawi SDNP will be installing a VSAT for its international Internet connection. Details available here.

12 December 2000 Incoming mail has started flowing. This development started at 17:30 hrs after the engineers at Leland Gateway had reconfigured their servers. This has resulted into further slow response when surfing the internet till all the mail queued out there is cleared. Only one international link is active at the moment.

11 December 2000 One International link is up. This was reported by MTL at 17:00 hrs. At the moment all SDNP traffic is routed through this link and hence slow response when surfing.

10 December 2000 Malawi SDNP regrets to announce that BOTH our international links are down due to a Malawi Telecomm Ltd (MTL) fault at Stadium Exchange at Chichiri, Blantyre. We have been told that the MTL installation got a direct lightining hit around 3pm on Sunday 10 December 2000 and MTL lost all international links. We are looking into the issue and we will provide further updates as we get them from MTL.

20 November 2000 Malawi SDNP announces new charges that will benefit Malawi SDNP clients. Click here for details on the new charges.

31 October 2000 The high packet loss problems, reported below on 28 October, seem to have been resolved. Malawi Telecom (MTL) has informed us that the problem was located to be on the whole E1 satellite link between MTL's earth station in Blantyre and MCI's station in New York. This link carries voice and data for us and another ISP. MTL and SDNP apologize for the inconvenience.

28 October 2000 Malawi SDNP is experiencing problems on the international circuit to the USA. Packet loss on this line has been high since yesterday. Malawi Telecom (MTL) technicians have been at our equipment room since yesterday to try to assist with this problem but as of today they have not located exactly where this problem is originating from. We have now switched all the traffic to our secondary link via MTL's Leland gateway. Since we are now operating at half our regular speed, Malawi SDNP clients will be experiencing slow access speed. Malawi SDNP is the only ISP in Malawi which has two international links to the global Internet. We will therefore continue to provide services to our clients in Malawi as others close down completely due to the current problems.

19 August 2000: Malawi SDNP has embarked on a system upgrade during the weekend of 19-20 August 2000. We expect that there will be no major break in services although small sections of the network will be pulled down for brief periods of time during the upgrade. The system upgrade is in two parts: (a) upgrading the computer operating systems and server software, (b) upgrading the telephone connections in collaboration with MTL

19 July 2000: Malawi SDNP put out a formal apology to its users and customers explaining reasons for poor network perfomance between 11 and 15 July 2000. This appeared in the local Nation newspaper of 18 July 2000 and in the Daily Times of 19 July 2000. The article in the Nation attracted a lot of reaction from Malawi Telecom Ltd (MTL) resulting in meetings and new and better working arrangements with MTL. We are satisfied with their reponse.

15 July 2000: The fault on the leased line between Malawi SDNP and Malawi Telecom's Stadium Exchange was cleared by Malawi Telecom Ltd (MTL) staff on Saturday 15 July 2000 around 12:30 pm. All SDNP services went back to normal shortly after that.

14 July 2000: Malawi SDNP expereinces network problems due to poor peformance on the Malawi Telecom Ltd leased line that connects Malawi SDNP to our upstream provider UUNET.

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