good show

[Bill Vermillion]

On or about Wed, Jul 28 19:08 , while attempting a Zarathustra 
emulation John Esak thus spake: 

> > From: filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com
> > [mailto:filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com]On Behalf Of Bill
> > Vermillion
> > Sent: Wednesday, July 28, 2004 1:07 PM
> > To: filePro List
> > Subject: Re: good show

> > It was Wed, Jul 28 10:30  when dayone said "Mia kusenveturilo estas
> > plena da angiloj. And continued:
> >
> > > John,
> > >
> > > I received several list messages 7/27.
> >
> > > However, 7/26 I sent you a reply message which bounced because
> > > your server was 421 temporarily unavailable.
> >
> > Which is an excellent reason for always having at least two
> > MX records in your DNS.
> >
> > When the main server is down the secondary holds them until
> > it comes back up and then delivers them.

I replied to Jay's reply but I'm just going to edit most of John's
question down to one thing that was not mentioned in Jay's reply.

> Can you explain this to me further? We have had _serious_
> problems with my favorite "Rapidsite/Verio". All mail going to
> nexusplastics.com and a lot going to valar.com is being delayed
> for this reason. They say their systems are overloaded and they
> are putting in a fix within the next 4-6 weeks that will fix
> the problem. Meanwhile, it has been 4 to 6 weeks already and
> we actually have large (like million dollar clients) telling
> us that if we can't be more responsive to our email they will
> start looking elsewhere!!

> How can we be responsive to email that comes 6 to 8 to 12
> hours after it has been sent, or worse not at all. I have
> been in nearly constant communication with lots of the tech
> support people at Rapidsite, but they are pretty much giving
> me the same patent answers that don't say anything. They want
> me to switch our problem accounts (which I would guess be all
> of them) to something called ViaVerio... some other product
> they must offer. Why would I move to another product from
> a company that is now providing me a product with failing
> service. It's not very trust insipiring. We are now nearly at a
> litigation point... Should I just switch to Level 3 as you have
> suggested in the past, or is there something that can be done
> with secondary MX records? Whay wouldn't they tell me about
> such an option?

Level 3 is a colocation facility.  You would have to find someone
who is already in a Level 3 facillity reselling space if that's
what you want to do - as it will take a commitment of about
$20,000/month for a new customer.

I know nothing about ViaVerio or Rapidsite.   But you might
investigate putting mail servers into a colocation facility.
And then getting the mail from those machines to your local
machine.

Do I not recall that you are using T1s to bring the data to you?
Is your mail server at the end of that T1?  If so putting your
main MX machine in a colo with a good backbone, and then
transporting the mail from that machine to your machine would be an
idea.  Owning your own machine means you control it all.

You say that they said they are overloaded and they will be putting
in machines in 6 weeks - but that's a long time in internet time.

And just WHAT is overloaded?  Their links?  Or their mail servers.
If it's the latter, then you would probalby be best served
by putting in our own mail servers.   That way you will control
everything.

That means you would only have to depend on the facility for good
connections and bandwidth.  Mailservers don't take a lot of
horsepower unless you are doing spam filtering on them, and then
the more CPU the better.

>From what you describe having your own mail servers could be a very
good move.

You won't have to move your web sites, or applications if you are
serving them.  Just have the MX records point to your server, and
it could be at any place and not have to be part of RapidSite or
Verio.  Your MX record is mail-fwd.rapidsite.net.  There
are nine machines responding to that name.  

All of those machines are going through the same verio gateway -
where my traceroutes get blocked.  There could be a choke point
there.  

If the fixes are going to take six weeks, then I'm assuming the
problem is more than just adding more mail servers.

Sorry for not responding earlier - I've been out everywhere today.


Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com