I've been catching up on my backlog of Risks Digests...and since some of
you may not see it, I thought you'd like to know that we're not the ONLY
folks with problems with the demons at Demon.  o-)
 
cheers, and happy holidays
 
cyclops
 
 
 
RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest  Monday 13 November 1995  Volume 17 : Issue 45
 
   FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
   ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator
 
 
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 95 16:22:36 GMT
From: Mike Ellims <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Internet Demon: A "demon"?
 
Anger over e-mail jam
By Richard Grant
[Excerpted from an unspecified British Sunday paper a week or two ago]
 
  BRITAIN'S biggest Internet service provider has been attacked by furious
  customers after 60,000 electronic mail messages went astray or were
  delayed.  Fast growing Demon Internet was valued at 26.7 million (pounds)
  last week in a City fund-raising exercise backed by venture capitalist
  Apax Partners. Yet at the same time it was advising some of its clients
  with the right equipment to by-pass its mail relay service to avoid
  electronic traffic jams.  Angry Demon customers also reported e-mail
  messages becoming lost or being bounced back to them after trying to send
  them after trying to send them across the Internet though Demon's
  electronic gateway. Some said they would quit Demon as they had lost
  confidence in its service.  Many of the delayed messages, which are
  transmitted from computer to computer across continents for the price of a
  local phone call, have taken up to five days to arrive. The industry
  standard is under 60 minutes.  ...  Demon's Todd said: 'When you double in
  size every five months things don't degrade gracefully, they suddenly go
  bang catastrophically'.  ...
 
What I find amusing is that the company I work for uses Demon as its service
provider. If your reading this then the mail got though!  We have recently
been getting mail messages that have been bumping around in the guts of the
system (Demon Internet)for up to a month.  I myself have been getting a lack
of response to mail message I've been sending out but I expect that because
no-one wants to talk to me :-) Other people have performed experiments where
they mail each other and third parties, the third parties received the mail
but it was not seen here.
 
This seems like a good example of things not scaling up well.
 
Actually something that happened moments before I was about to send this
is that I have just re-received a mail message sent to me 2 weeks ago.
 
The views expressed here and the fact I've copied something from a
newspaper source are my own doing and do not reflect the views of
my employer or my cat. Also all spelling errors are due to the cat
playing on the keyboard.
 
Mike Ellims  -  Pi Technology  -  [log in to unmask]  -  +44 (0)1223 441 256
 
  Dan Lester, Network Information Coordinator
  Albertsons Library, Boise State University, Boise, Idaho 83725 USA
  [log in to unmask]             http://cyclops.idbsu.edu/
  How can one fool make another wise?  Kansas, "No One Together," 1979