SAS e-mail gridlock blamed on overlaod

Students in the College of Arts and Sciences who wanted to read their electronic mail messages yesterday had to wait hours for them to arrive. Last night, administrators blamed the delays on a system overload. Everyone who logged onto the mail.sas system yesterday received a message saying, "Due to high overload yesterday evening and night, mail was not delivered over night." At one point yesterday, the system's load became so heavy that e-mail users could not log into their accounts at all. The message stated that the backlogged mail was not lost, and would be delivered throughout the course of the day. "It's a big [problem]," said College sophomore Susan Thompson. "I was getting directions for my trip to Florida and now I don't have them." The problem stems from the computer system, which currently has trouble handling the large number of users in SAS, network administrators said. "The system is configured to delay delivering mail when it is overloaded," said SAS Computing Assistant Administrator Shumon Huque. "It's just caused by a lot of people logging on. We had about 180 users yesterday." Huque said the system usually grows too crowded for mail to be delivered punctually by early afternoon. He added that by 6 p.m. the system is usually free, and by the middle of the night, all mail is delivered. "I'm a little bit annoyed," said College junior Jonathan Feldman. "Its preposterous for an e-mail message to take seven hours to be received." Several students also complained about messages which disappeared from their mailboxes within the last week. "Last night when I logged in, 20 of my messages were gone," said College sophomore Lawrence Kissko. Feldman said he faced a similar problem. "I had about 40 e-mail messages, and they just disappeared," he said. Feldman added that he called SAS Computing for help about a week ago, but has not heard from them since. Faculty members also complained about the speed of the system. "Yesterday [SAS e-mail] was extremely slow," said History Professor Drew Faust. "You would type a character and it would take about five seconds to come up on the screen." Shumon said a second system computer, which he hopes will eliminate the problems, is expected to be in place today. He cited several reasons for the overloaded system, including the large number of users and the amount of memory needed for the menu system to function. "Even [with the new computer] there could be delays during times of especially high capacity," Feldman said. Officials at SAS Computing say the e-mail system averages more than 20,000 pieces of mail per day.

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