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Laurence, The reality here is that we all depend on an awful lot of infrastructure and technology for everything we do day to day, from power and water to phones, campus and external networking, mail servers, web servers, file servers, and much more. For the most part, these systems are reliable, and we come to depend upon these systems and expect that they will be there whenever we need. But from time to time any of these systems will fail, and our lives will be disrupted to some degree. Our jobs as providers of these services is to make them as reliable as we can, so that others can count on the services and utilize them for their day-to-day activities. But when a service is generally reliable, its users may come to assume a higher level of service than what in reality can be promised by the providers. In the case of e-mail, it's a bad assumption to believe that it is a real-time communication system. Greylisting or not, there will be times when e-mail is delayed from minutes to hours. That's the nature of its design as a store-and-forward system. Now, I'm probably as big an e-mail user as most, averaging a good 200+ (non-spam) messages per day. And I do find that I am inconvenienced with delays in the mail stream, and I did notice some delays associated with yesterday's e-mail. But I live with that, and I normally find that the mail team is on top of these issues by the time I observe them, and I think they do an admirable job of keeping the mail system running as well as it is in face of its environment. Just my two bits. Doug On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 03:06:05PM -0400, Laurence Bates wrote: > In the College of Education there may be 30-40 faculty members working on 6 > or 7 figure deals at any given time. I think that it is fair to say that > they are not aware that email is not a reliable enough transaction medium > for their activities. I think that it is also fair to say that certain of > them will "significantly perturbed" if their work turns out to be > jeopardized through email delays. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Brian Martinez [mailto:[log in to unmask]] > Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:43 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] E-mail Issues > > Laurence, > > Firstly, the point to which you speak has never been an issue that we > have been made aware of. Secondly, I would be very afraid of doing > "major funding" strictly through email. > > How many people do you truthfully know who routinely run 7-figure deals > over email? I think your concern is placed at a higher matter that I > cannot address. The only thing I can comment on is that the greylisting > system has been in place for several months. We had the idea on the > table for several months before we wound up going live. > > Very few delays have stemmed from greylisting over the past months, but > we have done our best to see to it that they get fixed. Other delays > stem from numerous issues, our own email system not withstanding (for > example, yesterday's slowness due to problems with our NetApp). But I > have also seen problems on the sender's side, firewall issues, network > issues, and client wonkiness to boot. > > If you feel your concerns are not being met, I'm afraid you will need to > take them to some place higher than this list. I will continue to > advise against the impracticality of doing major business deals over > email without some other form of communication to be used as a backup. > I would never even buy something as little as $10 off the Internet > without knowing there was a phone number I could call in case there are > problems. > > If there are further questions anyone has about greylisting I will be > happy to do my best to answer them. It is a system that I play a large > part in because not too many of my other coworkers care to use OpenBSD. :-) > > ./brm > > > __________ NOD32 2614 (20071024) Information __________ > > This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. > http://www.eset.com -- Doug Nelson, Network Manager | [log in to unmask] Academic Computing and Network Services | Ph: (517) 353-2980 Michigan State University | http://www.msu.edu/~nelson/