Cousins, An Update from Karen Isaacson at RootsWeb regarding the JUNO problem I told you about in an earlier message, and general internet / e-mail problems that have been experienced by the whole web recently. Do you suppose it could be caused by GREMLINS, or is it the 50th Anniversary of Rosewell ?? Who knows! Let's all hope that it works itself out soon. Chuck Carter Your Host CARTER / HARDIN / WALLACE Family lists \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ >Resent-Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 09:46:14 -0700 >Subject: Juno, Internet unreliability, etc. >To: listowners-announce@rootsweb.com >Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 09:17:37 -0700 (PDT) >Organization: RAND, Santa Monica, CA >From: karen@rand.org >Reply-To: karen@rand.org >Resent-Message-ID: <"APvuzB.A.2gG.0_8uz"@bl-14.rootsweb.com> >Resent-From: listowners-announce@rootsweb.com >X-Mailing-List: <listowners-announce@rootsweb.com> archive/latest/4 >X-Loop: listowners-announce@rootsweb.com >Resent-Sender: listowners-announce-request@rootsweb.com > >A few bits of information, perhaps related, perhaps not. > >First, well, before I start, let me say that Brian really ought to be >writing this, since he actually understands how the stuff is supposed >to work that I'm going to handwave about. Please forgive any >technical errors, incorrect acronyms, etc. ;-) > >First, the DNS function on the Internet seems to be and to have been a >bit staggery since sometime last weekend, with different sites >(including RootsWeb) winking in and out of existence, at least as far >as other hosts are concerned. Last Sunday, and this morning, Prodigy! >has gone missing. Last night, mindspring.com was "host unknown". >Yesterday morning, =any= site ending in .net was similarly unknown. >Last evening, for about an hour, I suspect to most of the 'net, >RootsWeb didn't exist: there's this nice trough in the graph of >our bandwidth usage that is a bit difficult to explain otherwise. >And we're in a similar trough right now. > >In fact, as we speak, I just received this note from John Pimentel: > >> Assuming this reaches you L-Soft is reporting the following: > >> 550 <leverich@rootsweb.com>... Host unknown (Name server: rootsweb.com: host >> not found) > >Who's to blame? Who knows. ;-) The problem is that when host A wants >to contact host B, to deliver mail or look at a web page or whatever, >it touches base with a (this is super simplified: the actual procedure >is apparently much more Byzantine than this) third party. "Where's >RootsWeb? Where's Prodigy?" The third party is supposed to respond >with a string of numbers, the IP address. But the system is often >returning a shrug instead. Hopefully we'll exist again soon. And >Prodigy will be refound, etc. Meanwhile, just try again later... > >Second, Juno. Starting about noon on Tuesday, we've had serious >problems with mail deliveries to Juno. What is supposed to happen >is we ring up another site, say "We've got a letter here for >your user", they're supposed to say, "Sure, go!" Letter gets handed >off in less than a second and we head on to the next letter. >Or (like AOL often times), they respond, "Sorry, busy, try again >later." But again, a very quick transaction. > >Instead, Juno sits on the line, so to speak. "Hang on, I need to >get a pencil." Long pause. "Oh, darn, no paper, hang on!" Long >pause. "Oops, the lead broke, let me go sharpen that pencil..." >Etc. For an HOUR or more. To deliver a message of less than 2K? >Come on... (If Juno didn't respond at all, we'd time out well >before then and move on. But they send back just enough to string >us along.) Do like AOL and tell us to come back later, please? > >Juno isn't the only site that does this, but it's the only =big= >site that does it, and therein lies the problem. We can only >have so many connections open to the Internet before we run out >of table space, etc, and essentially stall. For a site like >Juno, with subscribers to virtually every list we host, we end up >with literally 100s of open connections to Juno. They're monopolizing >our connections, but not accepting mail, and no one else is getting >mail. > >This isn't the first time this has happened. Before, we've simply >shut down the mailing lists for a few hours and queued the messages >and waited for Juno to get well, and then started things up again. >Everyone, Juno and non-Juno, gets their messages that way, and the >delays aren't too bad. > >We did that this time, too. But four hours later, Juno was still >sticking. So we ran a script that trimmed all the Juno subscribers >out of all our lists (saving their addresses in a safe place so they >can be added back) and turned the lists back on. That was Tuesday >night. Since then, a few Juno subscribers have resubscribed on their >own. Enough that we can monitor whether or not our exchanges with >Juno are happening in a reasonable amount of time. As soon as they >do, we'll add all the Juno addresses back to your lists. > >This obviously can't be a permanent solution. If Juno is going to >do this every few weeks (that's their current track record), something >better needs to be found. We're in hopes that when we upgrade to >the new version of sendmail (an upgrade in progress), that that >alone will solve the problem. Another possibility is to shift >to qmail for delivering our mail. Rumor has it that some sites that >host mailing lists have totally locked out Juno: we hope it won't >come to that. > >If your Juno subscribers are looking for relief, meanwhile. ;-) I >don't normally recommend this, because the more links there are in a >chain, the more vulnerable it is to breakage. But in this instance, >it might make sense for them to look into a permanent address at a >site like bigfoot.com, iname.com, usroots.com, that would forward to >Juno. What happens then (I think!) is we hand the message off to >bigfoot, iname, or usroots, and then the hour long handshake with Juno >is their problem. Since they're undoubtedly configured differently >than we are, for them it may not =be= a problem, and everyone wins. > >Meanwhile, the Juno delivery I'm currently monitoring has been >sitting like a lump for 13 minutes. Doesn't look promising... > >Karen > >P.S. Oh, I said the problems might be connected. Juno, no duh, >must have a =lot= of mail to deliver. The DNS problems I mentioned >earlier would be making this very difficult for them, and could possibly >explains the degraded performance we're observing... >