With the advent of e-mail came the introduction of the phrase “snail mail” to describe the speed of regular postal service mail. But a new competitor is vying for the title: the University’s graduate student and faculty e-mail server, Darkwing, which boasts a slow-as-molasses fifteen minute or more wait for those who receive their e-mail through the University’s Webmail.
The Webmail slowdown, expected to last at least a couple more days, according to University’s Microcomputer Services Network Specialist Dan Albrich, has caused several problems that range from not being able to field students’ questions to missing discussion courses. Albrich said the sluggish performance is due to upgrading the old server that hosts Darkwing.
Graduate student Danny Landers is one Darkwing user plagued with long waits and an error-ridden inbox. Landers said from the time of logging in to his Darkwing account until reading the first e-mail he selects, his average wait is a quarter-hour.
Sitting in the library on Wednesday, Landers read other Web sites while waiting for his inbox to load. When he switched back to the e-mail window after about 10 minutes, the title bar along the top had loaded but neither the menu nor the inbox frames had. Then came an error message along the left-hand menu, which meant he’d have to reload if he wanted to click the options to compose a new e-mail or log out — another 15 minutes.
It has been like this since the beginning of the week, Landers said.
A graduate teaching fellow for the political science course Mafia & Corruption in Russia, Landers said his inability to get access to new e-mails has caused him
problems in the classroom.
“I missed a meeting with students to set a time for the discussion hour,” Landers said. “I could be missing more but I don’t know because I can’t see new e-mails. Some of my friends are teaching courses and it’s a problem because they can’t talk to their students at all.”
The slow-down has been a common complaint among graduate students, EMU computer lab assistant Bryan Kreitlow said. Kreitlow also mentioned that users who are still accessing their University mail through the old Webmail system, located at webmail.uoregon.edu, are receiving messages like “maximum number of users reached” and cannot log in.
“We have been getting tons of complaints,” Kreitlow said. “We’ve been saying (the University) is figuring it out since it’s the first week. We don’t know how true that is.” Albrich said for Darkwing Webmail users the wait will only be a couple more days. The server’s upgrade is centered around a new high-speed Network Attached Storage system, or NAS, that will store user accounts and data on these new servers, Albrich said.
However, the high cost of these NAS servers requires a special bid from the University to the State of Oregon’s Justice Department, which “has not yet approved the necessary
hardware purchase,” Albrich said.
When the University needs to purchase more than $50,000 in hardware, Albrich said, it is a long process in which many hardware vendors make bids. The University must justify a bid to the Justice Department if a company’s offer is not the lowest bid but offers a superior product, which can make the process even longer.
“In the meantime, we have built a temporary high-speed storage system which has some, but not all, of the performance improvements of the final solution,” Albrich said. “Darkwing users will only see a performance improvement after they change their e-mail program settings.”
The change involves switching the server address Darkwing users have inputted into their e-mail programs, like Microsoft Outlook, Eudora or Mozilla Thunderbird, to access e-mail instead of using Webmail. The process is detailed at micro.uoregon.edu/email/upgrade, Albrich said. Albrich recommends that e-mail users who use an e-mail program choose Thunderbird (www.mozilla.org) if on a Windows machine and Apple’s built-in Mail application if using Mac OS X.As for when these new servers will be implemented, Albrich cannot give a concrete answer.
“I’d say both Darkwing and Gladstone users will see a very noticeable improvement prior to the next academic year, with smaller but critical improvements in the short term,” Albrich said.
Until then, graduate students will suffer in an e-mail limbo.
“Yesterday it was 45 minutes (until I could check e-mail),” Vinit Sirichit, a graduate student studying economics, said. “It’s a little bit better from yesterday. I missed a class because we changed the time through an e-mail notification.”

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