Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mdf
From: mdf@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark D Freeman)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Question about Internet access
Message-ID: <126348@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 27 May 91 03:51:20 GMT
References: <1991May21.182416.12784@athena.cs.uga.edu> <124060@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <1991May22.050647.11202@Spies.COM>
Reply-To: mdf@tut.cis.osu-state.edu (Mark D. Freeman)
Organization: CompuServe; Columbus, OH. (personal guest account) at Ohio State U.)
Lines: 47

In <1991May22.050647.11202@Spies.COM> joshua@Spies.COM (Joshua Geller) writes:
>In article <124060@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> mdf@tut.cis.osu-state.edu (Mark D. 
>Freeman) writes:
>|>In <1991May21.182416.12784@athena.cs.uga.edu> mcovingt@athena.cs.uga.edu 
>|>(Michael A. Covington) writes:
>|>>A simple solution for a small corporation would be to use MCI Mail,
>|>>which can send and receive messages from the Internet.
>
>|>CompuServe, my employer, also offers an email gateway to the Internet,
>|>along with AT&T Mail, and soon to X.400 and MHS-based LAN email
>|>systems.
>
>Compu$erve, your employer, periodically bounces massive quantities of mail all 
>across the internet, and BITNET etc etc.


Josh,

I'm sorryt you've had such trouble with our Internet Gateway.  The
following comments should be understood in the context that I don't
speak for CompuServe in an official capacity here.  (Basically, I just
coordinate our in-house PCs, and have nothing whatsoever to do with our
Internet gateway.)

Our Internet gateway is a system at the Ohio State University which has
had a lot of reliability problems.  It was put together (a few
executables here, a few huge shell scripts there...) as an experiment.
It worked so well that it became a product.  The product became so
successful that it is overwhelming the resources originally assigned to
it.  I am certainly not assigning the blame to OSU, as no one knew how
much or how fast the volume would grow.  However, they (obviously)
cannot reliably handle our current volume for us.

So, we are working full-speed to bring the gateway in-house, where we
hope to have it show the same > 99.96% reliability as we achieve with
the rest of our systems.  I'm not sure, but I think we'll have a 56Kb
link from a set of redundant UNIX boxes in one of our computer rooms
directly to uunet.  As these systems will be dedicated to our email
gateway, service should be much better than our current setup.  With
luck, the changeover will be completed in July.

- Mark
-- 
Mark D. Freeman					M.FREEMAN@csi.CompuServe.COM
Manager, Microcomputer Services					  70003,4277
CompuServe; Columbus, OH			 Posted from a guest account
(614) 457-8600 x2818	          		at The Ohio State University