Computer users at the College who may be frustrated by the occasionally slow delivery of electronic mail can look forward to nearly instantaneous service next term after the installation of a new computer to control e-mail delivery.
Jim Matthews, the chief programmer at Kiewit Computation Center, said the recent delays have affected incoming e-mail sent from outside the College's BlitzMail system. Sometimes a message does not get delivered to on-campus users until hours after it is sent.
The main cause of the slow-down is the overwhelming number of messages received by the BlitzMail system, he said.
Matthews said the delays do not affect mail sent within the BlitzMail system or outgoing mail. He added that outgoing e-mail was also affected initially, but Kiewit transferred the outgoing mail responsibility to another computer in order to combat the problem.
UNIX System Administrator Steve Campbell said the overall e-mail message load is steadily increasing and history has shown that demand continually increases until the computer becomes overloaded and can no longer handle the volume.
Currently, Dartmouth's e-mail is handled by Dartvax -- a mail hub and news server that has been unable to keep up with the increasing volume of mail.
Campbell said Dartvax accepts a limited number of messages each minute. A message refused one minute may be accepted the next minute. However, once a message is returned to the sender's server, it may not attempt to re-send it for hours which is often the cause of the long delays.
The peak time for delays is between noon and 3 p.m., according to Campbell. "Every evening we catch up, but the next afternoon it starts again," Matthews said.
The e-mail delay problem will be largely resolved through the installation over spring break of a new computer to handle the increased volume of mail.
"We're throwing some money at the problem," Matthews said.
The new computer will deal exclusively with e-mail, as opposed to Dartvax, which currently handles BlitzMail bulletins and Usenet news in addition to e-mail messages.
The student consultants at the Kiewit Help Desk receive many complaints about e-mail delays from students, faculty and administrators, Matthews said.
"I'm complaining too," Matthews said. "It affects all of us."
Michael Ringenburg '99, one of the students who has been affected by the delays, said his physics professor e-mailed the class and the message did not arrive until 2 a.m. The professor, who does not use the BlitzMail system, had sent the message sometime in the afternoon.
Kiewit purchased the Dartvax computer four years ago. Matthews said this is about the average life-span for computing equipment.
"Three to four years is enough time for the industry to produce computers that are dramatically faster," Matthews said.
Blind carbon copy messages -- which do not reveal the names of other recipients -- are also a major cause of the increasing e-mail volume.
People send too many blind carbon copy messages "for justified and unjustified reasons" and cause an "extraordinary load" on the computers, said Kiewit Associate Director for Consulting and User Education Randy Spydell.
Each person added to the blind carbon copy field creates a new independent transaction; hence a BCC message sent to 50 people is the equivalent of 50 separate e-mail messages.
Spydell said he plans to attack the overuse of blind carbon copy messages through user education. "We realize we may not have been as proactive about education as we could have been," Spydell said.
If user education does not work, Kiewit may have to implement policies "limiting the number of the number of people allowed on BCC lists," Spydell said.
