ntl's email problems explained

Last week, we decided to contact ntlââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s chief executive of ntl, Simon Duffy and he has been in touch with us twice now and explained in depth whatââ‚ ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s really wrong with the e-mail service and what ntl are doing about it.

Hi Mick

Further to our email correspondence last week, herewith some
more background. I'm not sure it adds much since I gave you
the main bit of the story last week, but it may be helpful.

The new Openwave software platform I mentioned last week is
state of the art and will, once the hardware is working properly,
provide a high quality, single platform service for all our email users.
I am confident we made the right decision there.

The issue, as I indicated, is around hardware. The hardware we
have purchased is not proving to be as functionally capable in the
email storage area as we had been led to believe. This results in
the hardware freezing and giving the appearance that the mail service
is down. We are working flat out to resolve this with the supplier and,
if this was the only problem, I think we would have it resolved in the
near future. However, it has been compounded by a second issue -
the explosion in mail traffic in the last 8 months - which has caught
the whole industry out, including ourselves. When we embarked on
the email platform upgrade late last year, we specified our hardware
solution to cope with traffic levels that were being predicted for the
next three years, both by ourselves based on past experience and by
industry analysts. These predictions have been proved totally wrong.
Instead we have seen email volumes, driven by spam and viruses,
which have overwhelmed our platform. We suffered more than most
because we were in the middle of a migration when the explosion hit
- an example of Murphy's law with a vengeance.

It is, to put it mildly, very unfortunate that the migration of our
customer base from the old to the new software has been partly
derailed by these issues. However, I do want you to know that we
are doing all we can to resolve it as soon as possible. We are currently
reworking the whole hardware solution with the probability of spending
double what we first intended. We are also taking advantage of two
new products that have just come to market - one which allows
customers to manage their spam mail before it gets into their mailbox
and another which provides a comprehensive anti-virus capability.

As a result of all this, the migration to the new platform has been
delayed, which means that most of our customers are still on the old
platform, which is struggling to deal with the load. However, we
should have the great majority of our customers migrated to the new
platform by the middle of next month, with the rest following in the
autumn.

I hope this gives you enough information to understand the nature
of the problems we are wrestling with, even if it doesn't immediately
solve your problems. Please feel free to share this, as well as my earlier
email, with others.

Apologies once again.

Best regards,

Simon Duffy.

I cannot stress enough how open Simon has been here. It's not an immediate fix or comfort to customers but we should applaud the openness shown here. I do not know about anyone else but I feel more reassured.

[paulyoung666]

you cant knock him for being upfront and open , now we wait till it is sorted out

[chopsmcp]

Originally Posted by Mick

<snip>


I cannot stress enough how open Simon has been here. It's not an immediate fix or comfort to customers but we should applaud the openness shown here. I do not know about anyone else but I feel more reassured.

I don't. Yes - I applaud the guy's openness, and it's obvious they aren't just sitting there twiddling their thumbs. But the question isn't are they honest, it isn't are they trying - it's how likely is their strategy to solve the problem. The middle of next month is six weeks away. In the meantime, it sounds like their service is at the mercy of spamgangs. What he doesn't say is that a large proportion of the increase in traffic that's brought the system to its knees is the work of one spam outfit. So, to repeat a previous question: what happens if, as seems likely, more pile in? What contingency plans do they have for another sudden hike in traffic? Will they just watch helplessly as the whole service collapses?

A few more details on this product that "allows customers to manage their spam mail before it gets into their mailbox" would help. Doesn't sound particularly reassuring to me. Unless a large proportion of users use it, it's going to make little difference to the amount of traffic ntl's handling. Which, as has been acknowledged, is the problem.

[andygrif]

I would agree with that. Whilst I appreciate some communication from ntl on this, firstly it should not have to come as a response to questions from this site - this is something that should be sent to every ntlworld customer, and second it shows poor planning from ntl.

Why would they buy an important bit of kit without testing it first? They have waited till they had it delivered to find out it is no good - what kind of purchasing strategy is this?

Next, I would firmly disagree that others have been caught unawares with this too. There are many ISPs not having this problem, I have several email addresses, none of which are suffering the same symptoms as ntl's. ntl's future planning is that of a low-end ISP - this has been the case for many years, so I really should not be surprised that the email 'upgrade' has suffered at their hands too.

Whilst this may be a new era in communication of their problems, this does not absolve them of the fact that they seem to make many very poor judgement calls along the way. I'd be interested to see what he has to say about that.

[Flubflow]

So, in a nutshell, NTL just believed what the brochure and sales rep said without proper technical consultation before the upgrade.

As for the escalating growth in email excuse, why is it that my other email providers seem to cope without any problems?

Originally Posted by Flubflow

So, in a nutshell, NTL just believed what the brochure and sales rep said without proper technical consultation before the upgrade.ms?

Do you really believe that NTL spent several million pounds on just the say so of a sales rep without doing any testing etc Somehow I don't think so.

You can test and test equipment until you are blue in the face, but you can never be totally sure how it will perform until it is fully live.

[Flubflow]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Do you really believe that NTL spent several million pounds on just the say so of a sales rep without doing any testing etc Somehow I don't think so.

You can test and test equipment until you are blue in the face, but you can never be totally sure how it will perform until it is fully live.

No, I believe you said that.
I said, "without proper technical consultation".

Originally Posted by Flubflow

No, I believe you said that.
I said, "without proper technical consultation".

Hmmm,

Originally Posted by Flubflow

So, in a nutshell, NTL just believed what the brochure and sales rep said without proper technical consultation before the upgrade.

[ian@huth]

There are two issues which are affecting email performance, spam and virii.

The problem with spam is that it is compounded by people bouncing spam messages and using unsubscribe links in the spam to try to stop it. Both of these contribute to increasing the volume of email flying about and verify to the spammer that they have found a valid email address.

With virii there are too many unprotected systems and systems with very out of date virus signatures. Systems that become infected quite often start sending out emails galore to everyone in your address book and then repeat the exercise with those newly infected systems and on and on it goes.

The main problem is that the majority of computer users do not really know much about computer security and it is very difficult to get through to them what they should be doing. The walled garden that NTL have used for some virus infections has helped, but it only tackles part of the problem.

NTL customers will suffer more than those of many other ISPs because of the size of their customer base. Spammers will target the biggest ISPs as they are likely to get more results from them.

Originally Posted by Flubflow

No, I believe you said that.
I said, "without proper technical consultation".

They could of done all the best technical consultating in the world, for several million pounds you would expect it, but I believe you cannot forsee a massive influx in email viruses and Spam volumes especially during migration from the old software to the new one.

[Flubflow]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Hmmm,

"The hardware we have purchased is not proving to be as functionally capable in the email storage area as we had been led to believe."

Edit: I am pleased though that they are trying their best to resolve it. Whatever their best is.

[chopsmcp]

Originally Posted by ianathuth

NTL customers will suffer more than those of many other ISPs because of the size of their customer base. Spammers will target the biggest ISPs as they are likely to get more results from them.

Not quite sure what you're saying here. Spammers target whichever addies get them the best results, which isn't really connected to size. NTL can expect to be exponentially targeted; as other ISPs introduce server-side filtering, spamgangs will concentrate their [more accurately: other peoples'] resources on the ones that don't. NTL's recent strategy has put them in the firing line, and they don't have the server capacity to deal with the predictable results.

[Enterian]

I too should like to applaud Mr Duffy. This is an example of the sort of communication that NTL should be providing for its customers.

I was looking for alternative suppliers for my email, but in light of this (and as it seems we are to get anti-spam and anti-virus features thrown in) I shall hang on.

Enterian

[ian@huth]

Originally Posted by chopsmcp

Not quite sure what you're saying here. Spammers target whichever addies get them the best results, which isn't really connected to size. NTL can expect to be exponentially targeted; as other ISPs introduce server-side filtering, spamgangs will concentrate their [more accurately: other peoples'] resources on the ones that don't. NTL's recent strategy has put them in the firing line, and they don't have the server capacity to deal with the predictable results.

Many spammers use dictionary attacks which have more successful hits on a large ISP than a smaller ISP. They may send out millions of messages all of which have to be handled by the ISPs whether they are valid or not. Think about it, a million guesses at the part of the address before @ntlworld.com will result in more identified actual email addresses than a million on a small domain such as @chopsmcpsdomain.com

[sherer]

ok it's not quite what we wanted to hear but at least something is being done.. whether the new system will be up the standards we would all like is another matter but at least anti spam and av is a good step and if it stops the average end user from getting infected in the first place will also help reduce some of the traffic on the servers.. just hope this isn't a one off improvement and then it all stops until we get back to this situation in a few months \ years time