Concerning the continuing email service problems....

The UTC Enterprise Team of Systems and Networks/ITD continues to work very
closely with the vendor of Netmail to pin down and correct the causes of
the interruption in email services.  We have been making progress and there
appears to be light at the end of the tunnel, but with debugging complex
software systems there are no certainties.  As surprising as it may seem,
the outages yesterday and today actually are signs of progress, as painful
as it is, since they have provided more and new information in the
search to find the problem.

Finding and fixing problems in complex software requires a forensic
approach, much like a police detective solving a serial killer or chain of
bank robberies.  From incident to incident, we gather clues, look for
patterns, and place traps so the next time we gain more information or,
with luck, we catch the culprit in the act.  Once caught, there is still
the conviction phase to succeed at before we actually eliminate the problem.

The good news is, we are ready to start blocking spam more effectively,
thanks to our Netmail system's features, as soon as it won't intervene with
the detective work to resolve the existing problem.

Before Netmail, the campus put up with email service problems for many
years while we could not find and fix the problem. In that system, there
was no vendor to work with and we were on our own. With Netmail, we do have
vendor support and we will be able to fix the problems, but it will take
some time.

Thanks much for your continuing patience,
Richard
--
Richard L Gambrell, Director of Computing Systems and Networks
Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
103 Hunter Dept 4454, 615 McCallie Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598
Fax: 423-425-4150                Support Help-Desk: 423-425-4000
Direct phone: 423-425-5316       IT Business Office: 423-425-1755
Urgent/cell: 423-432-5122        Main UTC phone: 423-425-4111
Email: [log in to unmask]