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Technology Stocks : Network Associates (NET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: deeno who wrote (3401)	10/20/1998 6:00:00 PM
From: appro	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6021

I'm so mad at McAfee AntiVirus download problems and no response from McAfee support I could and will switch back to Symantec. Are these guys in a contest for worst customer service of the decade? Well, now I see I am not the only one: from Network World Fusion: nwfusion.com >>Antivirus users queasy By Robin Schreier Hohman Network World, 10/19/98 Santa Clara, Calif. - When Network Associates bought Dr. Solomon's this summer, the company thought the move would make it easier to kill off viruses. But the integration of Dr. Solomon's offerings with Network Associates' McAfee line may have brought problems nearly as pesky as the viruses themselves. Don't believe it? Just try to download a software update or troll through the relevant newsgroups. Let's start with the FTP and HTTP servers on the Network Associates, Dr. Solo-mon's and McAfee Web sites that store antivirus software upgrades. The servers have been malfunctioning periodically ever since changes were made to the server software a couple of weeks ago. A Network Associates spokesman acknowledged the server has been denying access to users and disconnecting people in the middle of downloading software. These Internet download problems have generated a sharp rise in the number of technical-support calls from end users to Network Associates. Since September, in online forums in which users of McAfee and Dr. Solomon's antivirus software can vent their frustrations, there have been complaints of long delays to receive telephone support. The America Online, CompuServe and Internet antivirus newsgroups are chock-full of people desperately seeking help for crashed PCs and aborted downloads. Many of Dr. Solomon's Deluxe Weekly Update program customers were unable to get updates for three weeks or more, company officials confirm. Some of the problems can be traced back to the arduous task of integrating more than a dozen Web servers around the world, says Gene Hodges, vice president of product marketing for security products at Network Associates here. Web servers are the lifeblood of any antivirus software company, because end users are often promised software and virus-detection upgrades for a year, and some pay extra to receive frequently updated virus-detection files. Network Associates' primary Web servers are located at the company's headquarters here, but they also have mirrored sites around the world. Confusing matters, Dr. Solomon's, which was based in the U.K., has its primary servers in Aylesbury, England, where most of its sales are generated. When software patches, upgrades and data files are posted to a primary server, they need to be replicated very quickly and accurately on all mirrored sites. Hodges says until two weeks ago all of the Network Associates Web sites used Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) Version 3.0, an Internet file and an application server, to handle the FTP and HTTP downloads. Version 3.0 easily took the large number of hits the company got, but it was not very good at automatically mirroring information, he says. About two weeks ago, all of Network Associates' sites upgraded to IIS Version 4.0, which has been shipping with Windows NT since late last winter. Version 4.0, Hodges says, is much better at automatically mirroring sites, but it broke under the heavy load. He estimates Network Associates' sites handle millions of downloads each month. Last week, Network Associates decided to scale back to IIS Version 3.0 and redouble its efforts to manually update mirrored servers. Hodges says the FTP problem was fixed by the middle of last week, and he expected the HTTP server problem to be fixed by the end of last week. Michael Stephenson, product manager for Windows NT at Microsoft, says Microsoft has been using IIS 4.0 on its home page since February of this year, shortly after IIS 4.0 shipped. He says www.microsoft.com gets about 250 million hits per day, and about six gigabits of data is downloaded each day. "I don't know that Network Associates' problem is attributable to IIS," he says. Not all the problems at Network Associates originated at the servers, however. Some problems stem from the origin of Network Associates, which was formed a year ago when McAfee and Network General merged. For example, users that bought WebScanX software from McAfee before the merger are finding that the automatic data file upgrades for the package are failing because of a simple directory error. Network Associates boasts that Microsoft's Plus! 98 pack for Windows 98 features McAfee's VirusScan, yet VirusScan users are having trouble making the program work with Windows 98. In fact, only WebScanX 3.1.6 and newer versions are compatible with Windows 98. Unfortunately, Plus! 98 ships with an earlier version of WebScanX. In addition to these headaches, Network Associates is scrambling to fix a bug in the VirusScan 4.0 retail version that causes the AOL service to freeze when running VirusScan. In spite of all these problems, Network Associates may not have a hard time keeping a loyal following. Ben Feigenbaum, IT security analyst at Bellcore, downloaded VirusScan 3.2 last week over the Web without incident. Feigenbaum says he runs an all-McAfee shop and will continue to do so.<<