Has anyone else encountered this problem?
 
  Over the past week I have received over half a dozen messages from
subscribers, all in the American midwest, saying they haven't received
their Autocat mail.  In each case their subscription shows with the
same address as their messages to me, their distribution setting is
set to MAIL, and I have received no error messages relating to their
site.
 
   I am aware of the Penn State problem and the watermain link at
the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.   In my responses to the
questionning responses I have in general blamed Penn State/Nebraska,
suggested they wait for several days in case mail had been temporarily
held in a buffer somewhere (and several later reported receiving
several days backlog at periods up to 5 days after the date shown on
the messages in question), read through a Usenet NewsReader, or
request the missing days from the Autocat archives.
 
    Autocat cannot be the only list suffering from this onslaught of
problems as some of my correspondents mentionned having problems with
other lists to which they subscribe (but others said their other list
mail was arriving OK).
 
    Nor is it just the half dozen or so persons who wrote to me who are
facing this problem.  After receiving several messages of that type I
sent a general message to Autocat describing the problem; several
additional persons then wrote me about multi-day suspensions of mail
delivery they had experienced.  And for every one who wrote there are
probablyothers who didn't bother but had experienced similar problems.
 
    Is this the first sign of over-burdened distribution points which,
even though they may not be suffering from the specific problems that
afflicted Penn State and Nebraska, are finding it difficult to keep up
with the flow of Internet mail?   Is there any solution in sight?
 
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Judith Hopkins                                    716 - 645-2796 (phone)
Technical Services Research and Analysis Officer  716 - 645-5955 (FAX)
Central Technical Services
Lockwood Library Building            [log in to unmask] (Internet)
University at Buffalo                ULCJH@UBVM    (BITNET)
Buffalo, NY  14260-2200
   Listowner of [log in to unmask]
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