Internet service provider UUNet this week apologised to hundreds of
thousands of dial-up users after its e-mail servers failed,
delaying e-mail traffic for more than a week.
Bill GoodwinUUNet blamed an attempt by a Canadian firm to send commercial
junk e-mails on a massive scale for the failure which provoked a
storm of complaints from businesses.
More than two million spam e-mails swamped UUNet last Thursday,
bringing its mail servers to a halt until Monday morning and
disrupting e-mail services to one million dial-up users.
UUnet said that it could take up to 72 hours to clear the
backlog of e-mail traffic and warned customers who called to
complain not to expect normal service for another week.
“Although most of the e-mails have now been deleted, the
quantity of genuine mail stored is so great that the system, which
serves around million users, is continuing to pass mail only
slowly,” the company said in a statement.
The failure has provoked complaints from small businesses using
UUNet’s Pipex service which fear that they may have lost valuable
business.
Greg Pos, who runs a small business selling stamps and books on
Web auction site E-bay, said the failure could lead to his company
being de-listed from the E-bay site.
“I could be literally struck off E-bay if I get a negative
response from the customers I have not been able to contact,” he
said.
On Monday, UUNet staff told Pos that the problem had been caused
by building contractors severing a UUNet cable, contradicting
official company statements - but this was later denied by a UUNet
spokesman.
UUNet was hit by a 36-hour outage in October last year, when 400
customers, including Ford and the London Stock Exchange, were
denied Internet access following a major upgrade. At the time,
users sought reassurances from UUNet that the outage would not be
repeated.