Thursday, 9 January 2014

Townlands Database has technical problems

http://www.thecore.com/seanruad/
As you may have noticed if you've been trying to use the IREATLAS Townland Database over the last couple of months, the site is frequently unreachable. It's been very hit and miss.

Yesterday it was out of reach every time I tried to get through. But an attempt ten minutes ago landed correctly.

I've heard this afternoon that this intermittent problem is being worked on. The site was moved last summer to a new physical server and the new ISP provides it with much greater bandwidth and associated speed for serving out the web pages, but then the random 'lack of service' issues started.

The site administrator, Ed Finn, has advised me that after the server's technicians failed to solve the problem, a senior network IT engineer has been put on the case and is doing additional testing to get to the root cause.

"We apologize for the inconvenience that this issue is presenting for our users and can assure you that we are taking all steps necessary on our part to get this issue resolved as quickly as possible," Ed told Irish Genealogy News. "I will keep you informed when we feel that [the server] has found the cause and a corrective solution has been implemented."

The IreAtlas townland database is a searchable database of all 60,000+ Irish townlands (and towns) as used for the 1851 census. It details the name of the County, Barony, Civil Parish, Poor Law Union and Province for each location. It is an important website for Irish genealogy research because it helps you to find the various jurisdictions in which any given townland is located.

If you should find the IREATLAS Townlands Database difficult to access, try this alternative on Shane Wilson's website.