[at-l] Email Floating in Space

[daveh@psknet.com (Dave Hicks)]

Maybe some of our technical folk have a better handle, but I suspect that
some of the loop lies in merger/take overs/etc of ISPs.  Ever see the
cartoon of the small fish about to be eaten by a larger fish which was about
to be eaten by a larger fish which was about to be eaten by a larger fish
which was about....

About two years ago I moved and I started off with a small local ISP.
Inside of two years they were combined, in some way or the other, into a
larger organization -- three times.  Each time there was a large amount of
the same sort of out of sequence, missing, duplicate, etc messages.  Each
time my ISP who told me it was impossible.

I suspect they were having internal routing problems as they tried to merge
their operations/hardware together.  In that email is a store and forward
(or I assume it still is) application and in that physically taking things
down and bring them back up, switching things around, etc often involves
back-up tapes, drives, etc, I assume some of the out of sequence, missing,
duplicate, etc messages could result.

Anyhow, since I switched to another smaller local ISP much of my high volume
of out of sequence, missing, duplicate, etc has dropped off -- albeit it
does seem to be on the rise again, of late.

Chainsaw