Oakland Community College Listserv appears to have been down
for the last 24 hours or so.  At least we can't connect
with it.  Some of our lists distribute mail through OCC.
So the mail that was sent via there hasn't arrived.
 
As far as I can see, Oakland Community College listserv
doesn't work fairly often.  The mail for the classes I teach
goes from H-NET to OCC to Lansing Community College,
so I can easily observe that it often drops into the void or
is severely delayed at times when both H-NET and Lansing
Community College seem to be in good shape.
 
I just added the keyword * Mail-Via= Direct
to all the Lansing Community College lists, as they
are in Final's Week, and very upset about the missing
mail.  It worked great.  Suddenly the mail is going
out again on these little lists (though yesterday's
mail is still hanging in the void somewhere).
 
I have some questions though, that I'd appreciate input on, if anyone has
time.
 
1.  At times I've heard that * Mail-Via= Direct
isn't such a good thing to use.  I can find very little
about it in the manuals, but they don't seem to approve
either.  What exactly did I do, and what are the disadvantages?
 
2. The lists I just changed are very small, so I don't expect that going
Direct will change our volume in any way we could notice.  But I'd like to
know what percent of our mail is now going out via Distribute groupings,
and what percent is going out Direct (is there an average percentage for
lists overall?).  We keep getting hung up by one node or another,
especially on Internationally based lists, and I'm wondering about
changing to Mail-Via= Direct on a number of lists.  What I don't
understand is how much more strain that would put on our sendmail (which
is already at max on peak days).
 
3.  OCC appears to be really causing us a problem.  I'd like to bypass
them on all lists, not just my little local ones, because I suspect the
many reports we're getting about mail disappearing on other lists may stem
from it getting lost there.  Is there a way for us to continue to
DISTRIBUTE mail, but not use selected problem nodes on the way out?  Or
better yet, to exclude nodes selectively when they are down, and then put
them back in later, when we hear it's fixed?  I'm especially interested in
directing where the first pass on the DISTRIBUTE goes, as it appears to go
directly from here to problem nodes very often, as far as I can tell.
 
I'm sure the OCC folk are great, but they have 6 lists with a total
of 133 subscribers, and I sense maybe they don't have quite
as much reason as we do to worry when they go down, so I'd rather
not distribute our mail through them at all.
 
4.  I don't know if there is a command to use to get the name and phone
number of the proper person to call when a listserv is down.  Since
[log in to unmask] won't respond to us, I can't ask it, but I'd sort
of like to talk with those OCC folk about what's going on.
 
Thanks for any insights and help with all this.
 
Vickie Banks
H-NET Technical Assistance
[log in to unmask]