back to article Virgin Media ADSL punters suffer 2-day email meltdown

Virgin Media says engineers are working to restore full email service to its ADSL subscribers after a hardware failure at partner Tucows downed the system. The outage occurred on Tuesday evening and is still not fully resolved. A Virgin Media spokesman said on Thursday afternoon that webmail access has been fixed for all the …

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  1. Duncan Hothersall
    Heart

    OpenSRS

    Interesting that this comes days after the rebranding of Tucows' wholesale email service as OpenSRS. All management is change management...

  2. Colin Millar
    Go

    Virgin Media - Regular as clockwork

    Some observers believe that it is not in fact the moon which govern the tides but Virgin Media's email servers falling over.

    If I thought any other ISP was actually any better and could be arsed dealing with customer service droids I'd move.

  3. Tim Spence

    @ Colin Millar

    Not *any* ISP, but *most* other ISPs are actually better.

  4. Pete
    Dead Vulture

    Does Tucows also provide delivery of comments?

    OpenSRS

    Posted 30 minutes ago

    Virgin Media - Regular as clockwork

    Posted 20 minutes ago

    Is there some censorship going on here? There's only comment when I check the page.

  5. David Eddleman
    Thumb Down

    @Duncan

    ...what? OpenSRS is their domain name system.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    OpenSRS is the domain service...

    So if OpenSRS went titsup, then it affected a fair number of people. I quit using OpenSRS the day my hosting provider started their NIC. I trust them a lot more, even though OpenSRS is Canadian.

  7. Michael Jennings

    False alarm

    My first reaction was that they had simply deleted my e-mail account because I stopped using them as an ISP three years ago. But no. Apparently it is just that they are crap.

  8. You're my wife now Dave
    Happy

    @ Michael Jennings

    Ha, my ISP is VM but my old ISP still delivers my mails - for free, 4 years on!

    Makes you wonder why some ISP's are so lax at deleting lapsed mail accounts - what's in it for them?

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Decoding the management spin

    "Working around the clock"

    means

    "It'll take days, not hours"

    Next they'll be having a go at finding out how it happened, and putting measures in place to see what happens next time but hoping that it doesn't.

  10. Nick L

    Where's My Cows ?

    You're right, The Ultimate Collection Of Winsock Software is a damn silly name for an ISP ...

  11. elreg@mailinator.com
    Coat

    Glad I left VM

    I was fairly happy with NTL (cable and adsl). Things went downhill rapidly after Virgin took over (adsl). I am now _extremely_ happy with Zen (adsl).

    Maybe there is a good reason for staying with Virgin as an ISP, but I have no idea what it might be.

    <I got my coat and left>

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    @Colin Millar

    You need to raise your expectations!

    Your ISP (3.5/10): http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/products/10.html

    Best of breed (9.5/10): http://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php

    Virgin still has customers ?!?

  13. Duncan Hothersall
    Heart

    @Dave

    From Tucows' website:

    "Recent News »

    Tucows Reseller Services is now OpenSRS

    July 27, 2008 — Some of our long-time resellers may remember that OpenSRS was the name of our original reseller service when it started in 1999. We feel this name best captures our heritage as a provider of services to hosting companies and ISPs and will let us continue to build on our promise to be Reseller Friendly.

    We'll continue to provide you with our suite of wholesale services - Domains, Email, SSL, and our new Personal Names service - only now we'll be doing so under the OpenSRS name."

    The wholesale email service now falls under the OpenSRS brand.

    You're welcome.

  14. David Hayes

    Happy Virgin ADSL customer

    But then, I don't touch any ISP's email, and use my own tied with my domain. At least my hosts work faster than Virgin email's!

  15. Andy Tyzack
    Happy

    oh my god

    so most of the time your email works, then when it goes off for a couple of days you all piss and moan

    GET A LIFE PLEASE

  16. Martyn Breckenridge
    Thumb Down

    The Mother of all cock-ups

    Title says it all really

    [Serves you right for being with virgin media]

  17. kim madge

    Another **ck up by Virginmedia

    Whats wrong with this isp!

    It supplies crap service, and now it cant even give us e-mail facility without using a third party supplier, i wondered where the Tucows advertising came from now i know

    if it wasnt for the free newsgroups i would ditch these amatuers very quickly!

  18. jon
    Stop

    Free email is a false economy

    Get your own domain name and host it with a quality provider. Then you never need to suffer this sort of muppetry again.

    I recommend the Zimbra service from Simply Mail Solutions: www.simplyms.com - excellent Ajax web interface and there hasn't been a single outage that I'm aware of in the two years I've been using them. All of that, including a more than adequate 1GB mailbox for a tiny £3.50 a month.

  19. Martin Nicholls

    Staying with VM

    "Maybe there is a good reason for staying with Virgin as an ISP, but I have no idea what it might be."

    As a cable customer that would be 20mb/sec without living 3 inches from one's nearest exchange. Really can't remember how long ago I used an ISP's email service (they shouldn't provide them at all imo - but how many people use gmail yet would complain if VM stopped providing such services?).

    But yes I don't understand why VM have an ADSL arm all all - the only thing it does for them is win them bad publicity, they should dump all their customers on somebody like zen or be.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To avoid confusion, OpenSRS may be Canadian,

    but I don't believe it is affiliated with OpenBSD, which is based in Alberta, Canada. When I saw OpenSRS I assumed it was but then couldn't find reference to it on their website.

    I don't know if any of you were thinking this, as well.

    OpenBSD is, too my very limited knowledge, a rock solid OS and the projects affiliated with it are pretty good too. Those are OpenSSH, OpenBGPD, OpenNTPD, and OpenCVS.

    Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

  21. Wilm
    Coat

    flashback!

    Cripes! #1: people still use ISP email?

    Cripes! #2: tucows is still around?

    Mine's the purple one; I'm gonna party like its 1999

  22. pctechxp

    @jon

    Seconded

    I use 1 and 1 for my domain and mail (never had an issue with their linux mail cluster) and Namesco for my ADSL because its cheap and their service ain't bad

    My mail costs me just over £8 a year

    lot to be said for not putting your eggs in one basket.

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