Mail Server Issues

[dysonco]

My point was my own take on the situation the issue I am sure is being dealt with as fast as possible and I am confident it will be back as fast as possible not sure how many back ups are possible I know how frustrating it is but (and its my opinion only ) I am confident that all that can be done is being done,I am no engineer and have limited knowledge of this but I cant see what else IDnet are supposed to do I pay the same but accept that from time to time things go wrong or break but thats the way it is from my own perspective and personally Im happy with the outstanding service I recieve from this company I moved once but soon returned ..... because of the service and speed with dealing with these issues ok I might hope its gets resolved sooner but cut them some slack the guys who are working on it I doubt can go any faster
but like I say this is my own personal opinion

I think the mention of 'THE mail server' as opposed to 'mail servers' probably started the worry.  If my company (which isn't an IDNET customer apart from one of our backup adsl connections being with IDNET) with a total of 12 employess can have mirrored mail servers (exchange servers I know, so not quite the same thing).  Then for an ISP such as IDNET to not have mirrored mail servers does seem a little odd?  I dare say that the cost of the hardware is far outweighed by the running costs, but for a premium ISP like IDNET you do hope that they plan for at least a basic level of failover.

I certainly not expecting there never to be any issues, I'm too much of a realist and have spent too much time with computers not to be aware that sometimes 's**t happens' and I readily agree that IDNETs service on the whole is exemplary, which is why I am with them.

I would be interested to hear from IDNET what thier email infrastructure is though?

[Ardua]

I am experiencing a touch of 'deja vu' here; this is not the first time that there has been an e-mail problem which was not a quick fix. All technical things fail from time-to-time and I am sure that IDNet is doing everything within its power to put things right; however, yet again, their very poor company to customer communication skills come to the fore. The status page is still showing a fault announcement timed at 08.11. Periodic progress updates are the norm with other premium ISPs - why not with IDNet? Good communication costs nothing.

[Simon]

When there is news, I am sure they will let us know.  Simon is currently at Telehouse looking into this as a priority, but I guess there just isn't always a quick fix.

[wkb21]

TBH, we didn't expect it to be a major outage

There should be redundancy to cover plausible failures.  Aircraft provide flight, and inadequate redundancy causes a fall out of the sky.  Cruise liners provide buoyancy, inadequate redundancy causes sinking.  Idnet provides communication and has fallen out of the sky, sunk, forgotten some fundamental principles.  A useful lesson. 

[Technical Ben]

You don't get timescale guarantees on email clients/services. Hence the response time varies. When I was working for big companies, we used email internally, but one of the big reasons for not using it on external communications was it's a non guaranteed service.

Phone calls and letters, faxes etc are all covered by providers under a guarantee of service, or a delivery timescale (first class, second class etc). I am not aware of one for email. So, IDNet (and every other ISP) run their email as best they can. However, they have not promised the impossible. They know it can take time to get working on occasion. This seems to be one of those times.

Basically, with A phone call, you can call a little later. With a letter you can get the post the next day, if the post man misses your house today. There's only like 2 or 3 things that could possibly go wrong with those services. With email, well, it's totally subject to what kind of hardware failure or error it is. There is hundreds of things to check. Some take seconds, others hours...

[mervl]

I appreciate you are volunteers, but I always wondered what the "News" banner on the forum was for!  I gather that a general failure affecting all customers doesn't become "news" until it's continued for at least six hours, which I suppose is not the usual definition we expect for "news".  Mind you, I think the BBC should adopt that practice, it should improve the quality of their reporting no end! Sounds a good one for m'learned friend Levinson to recommend!

I welcome any e-mail respite. (Will the message be updated though, like when the problem is fixed?). E-mail servers are a menace though, and although I've a mix of free and paid for subscriptions they all have off-days, and some law says its always the wrong one that goes down. Patience as always.

[mervl]

Error!

[Bill]

Just had an email through, so maybe we're back in business... I was expecting more than one, but I assume there'll be a backlog?

[Lance]

Undoubtedly, Bill.

As for the news banner, Mervl, as you said we are all volunteers so can not always give extra support on the forum just because there is a widespread problem. Just because it was 6 hours after the initial post that the banner was activated, it doesn't mean it isn't still news nor does it mean it isn't news until then.

As soon as we have confirmation the problem is fixed the banner will reflect this.

[gingergalore]

Yay - it's fixed - ty ty ty ty

[Simon]

We also did not know that it wasn't a simple fix until some time after the initial outage, which happened outside of IDNet's support hours.  There was an ongoing thread on the forum, which was not difficult to find. 

The news banner has just been updated. 

[David]

Thanks IDNet thats that and thanks Simon for all your efforts 

Now I had better answer this lot 

[MarlyM]

Thanks for sorting it IDNet.

Is there anything I need to do?

I've not had a single email through yet.

I do hope they've not gone missing!

[Baz]

not working for me yet

[Glenn]

I just had mail from 5.30 onwards come through.

[Simon]

I've had mail, earliest 07:24.  No idea if any was lost. 

[esh]

Argh, all my email has completely vanished. I assume some restoration is still going on?

[MarlyM]

Just had a delivery.

First one from 08:51.  Not sure of any loss.

Thanks IDNet for sorting it.

[Thomsk]

I've been following this thread since this morning and my Idnet email has just come up as well.

Unfortunately the test emails I sent myself around 10:00 am from my hotmail account are nowhere to be seen, so I'm guessing that there may have been some loss 

[David]

Mine are arriving in batches so with luck third or fourth lot just arriving

[Bill]

so I'm guessing that there may have been some loss 

Not necessarily... mine's coming through in dribs and drabs, in no discernible order. It'll stay that way until the backlog is cleared, which (guessing from past outages) I'd guess may take a couple of hours?

[David]

I sent a test at 08.03 and its just been delivered so its promising

[Simon]

The server was borked (technically!), so they are restoring data to a new server.  I guess that can't happen all in one go.

[Thomsk]

Not necessarily... mine's coming through in dribs and drabs, in no discernible order. It'll stay that way until the backlog is cleared, which (guessing from past outages) I'd guess may take a couple of hours?

That's good to know, hopefully nothing has been lost then 

[Glenn]

See the announcement from IDNet http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,28213.msg667262.html#msg667262