wmapple@BRL.ARPA.UUCP (02/16/87)
Dear folks, Info-Apple is beginning to see traffic expressing questions as to why mail from Info-Apple has not been regularly received at various sites during the last month. By this note, I will try to explain what has happened and what, if anything, you can do about it. There are several reasons for the recent interruptions in ser- vice. Not every reason applies to every site. The most pervasive problem was a severe disruption of service on the Arpanet (as distinguished from MILNET) recently. This seems to have been caused by the break of a couple of key trunks in the net and, per- haps, other equipment failures. These are gradually being repaired and other improvements are being installed to improve Arpanet service. Your own site administrator probably knows more about network problems than I do. If you are concerned about sudden interruptions in mail or other network services, you should direct your concerns first to your site or system administrator or network official. Flooding Arpanet, MILNET, BITNET, UUCP, USENET, CSNET, and other nets with idle chatter and speculation about the problem (e.g. on lists such as Info-Apple) only adds to the burden that the disabled network must handle. A second problem that affects a subset of sites is the heroic amount of overwork that we all have imposed on the Arpanet/BITNET gateways such as the one we know as wiscvm.wisc.edu at Wisconsin. At the present, we are trying to alleviate this problem by sending only one copy of Info-Apple traffic to a BITNET site which will further distribute it to all BITNET subscribers. This service is not yet ready for use by Info-Apple because the kind volunteers at the BITNET redistribution site have not yet fully implemented and tested the necessary software. A third problem occurs at Christmas, during the spring, and at summer vacation time at universities. People go home, and the mail piles up. Then Info-Apple-Request receives "failed mail" messages from such sites telling us that mail to "user@site.dom" is undeliverable because: "disk quota exceeded." In addition to clogging the net with failed mail messages, this prevents the user from ever seeing that traffic. Related to the third problem is the shutdown of some academic hosts over college and university holidays, thus preventing the redistribution of mail to local sublists otherwise unknown to Info-Apple-Request. Again, subsets of users miss traffic for a two to three week period. In each of these cases, the fastest way to find out why you are not receiving main from Info-Apple (or from anyone else) is to query your local system administrator, network official, or system "wizard." If they assure you that everything is fine, send your question to Info-Apple-Request@brl.arpa and I will check out things from this end. However, there have been cases where a host could reach me but I could not reach the host. Please provide alternative addresses, paths, or nets by which you can be reached. I try to trace the cause of every instance of failed Info-Apple mail. However, I have been receiving as many as 50 failed mail messages per day recently; most of these were due to the aforementioned problems. One such message today listed 151 addresses at which mail for 3 Feb 1987 was not received. That's only 13 less than the total subscribership of Info-Apple! I hope that this helps you to understand what has been happening. Info-Apple isn't the only community affected by recent network and host outages. In any case, it's nice to know that you care! Brint Cooper Info-Apple-Request@brl.arpa