mail delays [was Re: [plug] Mr Busby is off to see the wizard]

[James Devenish]

In message <1065787927.22705.3.camel at rattus.localdomain>
on Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 08:12:08PM +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:
> iinet have been having a lot of spammer problems, as have the Uni's, so
> I guess most large organisations are suffering.

BTW throughout the year I have been experiencing very delayed ("missing")
e-mail. Seems that DNS on spark.plug.linux.org.au (machine hosting this
list) occasionally fails.

> I am not sure its fair to blame iinet for spammers, as the last couple
> of weeks have been tough all round - think what it would be like if
> YOU were running a large system ...

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
10 October 2003
Telstra has revealed the reason for the e-mail delays many of its customers have 
experienced over the last two weeks.

Some BigPond customers have experienced diminished incoming mail performance, 
with messages often being delayed by several hours or more. Telstra spokesperson 
Kerrina Lawrence told ZDNet Australia   the problem was with a software upgrade 
recently implemented by Telstra.

"About two weeks ago we loaded a new software version from our supplier," said 
Lawrence. "Subsequent to that a software bug was identified."

Around half of Telstra's customers had been transferred to the new system before 
the bug was detected. The bug "artificially increased the load factors on the 
platform", which made the software think erroneously that a large amount of 
traffic was moving through the network.

The software was implemented by a number of international ISPs, according to 
Lawrence, and the software bug remained undetected despite "rigorous" testing by 
the supplier beforehand.

Telstra's mail system integrator is believed to be HP.

Lawrence said returning the customers to the previous platform was "not an 
option" because it would result in a total outage and put the e-mail data at 
risk. Instead, Telstra opted to "work patiently with the supplier so that e-mail 
was not lost", according to Lawrence.

When asked whether Telstra would be seeking compensation from its supplier 
Lawrence replied: "Certainly we will be having an extensive post-incident 
investigation with the supplier, where we will put forward our concerns."

Lawrence said the problem was fixed yesterday, although some customers 
experienced additional problems late last night due to an unrelated software issue.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/communications/story/0,2000048620,20279523,00.htm


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