On Wed, 7 Aug 1996 19:24:29 -0700 Mario Rups <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > I heard that AOL crashed today. Has anyone heard anything? I run > > four lists off of AOL's LISTSERV site and haven't received a response > > It even hit the evening news -- since 0400 EDT this morning, they said. > And HERE is where I get VERY grateful for AOL's habit of rolling all > error messages into one per message as opposed to one per subscriber. > > Good luck, AOL, I suspect you're going to be in for a LOT of flack. Why? When a system "crashes", several things happen: - 1. users cannot login -- and they complain, - 2. E-mail originating from AOL is not delivered, and maybe 1% of the recipients notice the lack of E-mail, - 3. E-mail destined for AOL cannot be delivered by SMTP-clients. Fortunately, SMTP is "robust" -- it was *DESIGNED* to include the possibility that the receiver's SMTP-server may not be functioning at the time that the sender's SMTP-client attempts to make a connection. So, unless the AOL outage lasts for a *LONG* time, the SMTP-client will just keep "silently" attempting to make a connection. After a *LONG* time, say 1 day or 3 days or 7 days, the SMTP-client may either issue a "temporarily unable to deliver" message, or a "permanently unable to deliver" message. It's only at this point that the non-delivery is announced to the author of the message. In general, if an SMTP-server is "down" for a *SHORT* period of time, the sender of the E-mail will get *NO* notification from the SMTP-client that the mail-delivery was not "instantaneous". A tempest in a tea-pot?