What was high tech in 1998 is no longer high-tech in 2003. The computers and software that underlie the Castlebar web site and the many hosted sites have just been upgraded.

The highly reliable system in use here in Castlebar for the last four years or so has churned out millions of files each month to our visitors from all over the world. Local companies have received millions of email messages through the technology installed here after the information age competition. One commercial Castlebar-based company even received a million hits to their web-page over a two week period in response to their web-promotion.

Today the Castlebar.ie site serves up over 600,000 pages each month with almost 2 million separate files delivered from the main work-horse server. In addition we have been pumping out local radio and specially made videos from another dedicated server.

Well over 100 other websites have been online continuously for the past number of years generating business for local firms and publicity for many organisations in Mayo and further afield. Our 'uptime' has been over 99.99% over the period providing a highly reliable service for customers. Our large battery backup and diesel generator has ensured us against powercuts and other disasters.

As with all things computers, however, regular upgrades are needed. The 1st of March marks the first full day of our new server network. We have upgraded hardware and software and improved our bandwidth.

As the new IP addresses ripple through the name servers that guide browsers across the Internet you may experience one or two little glitches during the transition period. You may be pointed to the old server temporarily, for example. There is also a considerable job entailed in checking that all programs necessary to produce the pages and information you see on the Castlebar.ie site are running correctly in their new environment. It will be a few days before we get our video and audio feed back on line for example so we hope you will bear with us as we have to give priority to the commercial clients on the system.