‘Tsunami of Spam’ Floods Webmail

By Suzie Chu

OIT finally has an answer to student frustrations over recent problems with Webmail: a brand new server.

According to Carol Kondrach, associate vice president of the Office of Information Technologies (OIT), the new server should be launched by Jan. 19, 2007, in time for the spring semester.

The new server will be an upgrade to the current server and will provide students with an improved Webmail interface along with additional disk space, said Kondrach.

Currently, OIT is assessing the options in brands, models and prices, which will be determined within the next week.

“The wild card in terms of determining the date is how quickly we can get the hardware here,” said Kondrach. “It’s not just going to Best Buy and taking something off the shelf. That’s what we are working on now.”

The boiling point for many students occurred during Thanksgiving break, when OIT did serious work in addressing what Kondrach called a “tsunami of spam” that wreaked havoc with the system. Those who tried to access Webmail during the break were confronted with error messages for two days. Most students couldn’t access their e-mail until early Monday morning.

Students were fuming when it appeared that nothing was resolved over the holiday. Some expressed concern over their grades because many teachers depended on Webmail or Web sites for their classes.

“I couldn’t access Webmail all break and I had tons of work to do,” said sophomore Brian Moy. “I couldn’t receive any e-mails with homework assignments, which can hurt my grades.”

Sophomore Krista Lutz had similar complaints.

“My Spanish class had an online workbook and the media wasn’t loading so I couldn’t get my work done,” she said. “I expected to come back and for everything to be working and it’s still the same.”

According to Ricardo Stella, assistant director of Networks and Communications, it was calculated in mid-October that about 375,000 messages make it into the system each day. Out of those, about 105,000 messages would actually be allowed to go through, because about 270,000 of them were blocked as spam messages. Another 33,000 of the messages allowed to pass were marked as suspected spam.

Those numbers represented a huge increase in spam in a period of months, Kondrach said.
Although OIT will be working on the launch of the new server during the mid-year break, which would have more advanced methods to beating spam, Kondrach stressed that students will still have access to Webmail.

While addressing the issues over the Thanksgiving break, OIT ran into many problems.
“There was one problem after another [while] putting the new hardware in,” said Kondrach.

“It took a lot longer so they wouldn’t lose any information. They had to keep [Webmail] down.”

The server had trouble accepting the new hardware, which forced the outage over the weekend.

“It went as planned to solve the problem, but the hardware problems forced e-mail services to be out for most of the weekend,” said Kondrach.

Faculty was not informed of the Webmail issues until Wednesday, Nov. 29, five days after the outage started on Friday, Nov. 24.

Dr. Aaron Moore, assistant professor for the Communication and Journalism Department, sees how difficult it is for students and faculty without access to Webmail, but it should not hinder the work, he said.

“It’s an inconvenience but it should not be a reason to stop working,” said Moore. “Students are upset about working in groups and Webmail being down, but my response is kids have four or five different e-mail addresses.

“Just because Rider’s e-mail is down, should not be the reason to stop working because you should have alternative e-mails to contact people and phone numbers.”

Students on the Princeton campus are encountering the same problems from Webmail and the network. In some of the classrooms, there is no Internet access at all. Princeton SGA President Christian Stück said he is upset about the lack of communication between OIT at the Lawrenceville campus and the Princeton campus.

“I tried to contact and e-mail OIT a few times, but I haven’t been able to get responses back,” said Stück. “I think the service is less than par, less than what I expected. I expected more than a quick comment on Webmail on Sunday night.”

Stück understands that the school may have limited resources to fix the problems quickly but he is more bothered by poor communication from OIT.

“It’s a huge issue,” said Stück. “I don’t think there has been a genuinely successful attempt to communicate with the students to keep us up-to-date and why there are these issues.”

Kondrach was able to meet with Lawrenceville campus’ Senate on Tuesday, Nov. 28, for one of the most thrilling sessions in recent memory, according to Lawrenceville SGA Vice President Nick Barbati. At the meeting, Kondrach was able to see how frustrated the students were but also gained insight on what should be done.

“It was a mixture of students venting and problem solving,” said Barbati. “Internet is not something a Rider student can go without. The meeting really developed a good relationship with the students and OIT. What came out of it was great progress.”

At the Senate meeting, Kondrach stressed the importance of calling the OIT Help Desk and providing complaints.

“We made some network changes, we need feedback,” said Kondrach. “Students need to let us know. If it’s not fixed in a day, call again.”