My Netcom Email works this morning
and my ISP POP access here in N.Y.C.
was never interrupted, so I'm happy.
hell, anything to get away from AOL.
Netcom users with IDs that begin with
one of 12 letters are finding it difficult to
get their e-mail.
Many users of Internet service provider Netcom have been unable to send
or receive e-mail for close to 24 hours as a result of a hardware failure.
The outage began at around 7 PM PT Wednesday, and affected all users whose
user-names began with one of 12 letters (a, d, f, h, i, k, l, n, q, r, u and v). It
resulted from an error in one of the file servers in Netcom's San Jose, Calif. data
center, according to the network status page of Mindspring Enterprises Inc.
(Nasdaq:MSPG), which recently purchased Netcom.
The ISP has since attempted to rebuild the file server, but as of Thursday evening
the affected users could still not access their messages, though Netcom posted
assurances that no messages would be missed or destroyed.
The incident is the second Netcom outage since its purchase, following a May 10
outage which mainly affected users with names beginning in "d."
In an e-mail sent to affected users, Netcom told them that they could still log into
their account, access the Web and send e-mail, but that "you will be unable to
access or read your e-mail through your primary, or any secondary, mailboxes.
Please be advised that your account will continue to receive mail, but you will not
be able to retreive or read it until service has been fully restored."
Angry users
At least one user was getting fed up as the situation wore on and their e-mail
continued to be blocked.
"What happens when the email systems of a major worldwide ISP is down for over
a day and many of its email users are tied to email for its critical business
operations? THEY GET PISSED!" one user wrote to ZDNN. "Even one hour
downtime can affect me and my business significantly." |
