Following on from a previous post about delays on the SpamBlock server, we have moved it to a new faster server to improve performance further.
We will monitor spam filtering performance on Monday morning as traffic starts to build but we feel that the upgrade should improve performance considerably.
Thanks,
Duncan
We have noticed that at peak times our spam blocking service is causing mail delivery delays. No mail is being lost, but there are some delays with the delivery of the mail to end-users. There appears to be a number of causes of this, and we have made some configuration changes which we think will help.
One of the problems is that take-up of the spam blocking service has been high, and the server is now handling approcximately 100,000 messages per day, of which a very large percentage is spam.
We have enabled recipient verification which will ease the load since a lot of messages can be rejected instantly (since they are not to a valid recipient), but this does mean that all domains using the service can no longer have a “catch-all” email account.
We will monitor delivery times on Monday as the mail load increases again, and if we still have delays then we will commission a new server to spread the load.
Sorry for the inconvenience with the occasional delays - we will get them sorted out. Overall though feedback has been fantastic - the service really does remove the vast majority of spam, with incredibly few false positives.
Duncan
Hi,
We have two kinds of spam filtering - free (which can be configured in your web mail - mail.yourdomain.com) and advanced (for which there is a small monthly fee).
The advanced filtering is provided by a third party company and unfortunately, as many of you will know, they recently performed an upgrade which did not go well. In fact, it has gone so badly that they have now contacted us (and many other ISPs) to say that they do not have any confidence that they will be able to get it working again. They are therefore intending to run a much reduced service from this Friday 4th May. The reduced system will still filter spam, but will not provide quarantine reports nor any way to release trapped messages - they will simply be deleted.
We do not think this is acceptable (since email can ultimately be lost) so we are withdrawing the service. We will be contacting all affected customers over the next few days. So, this is the bad news.
Now, the good news. We have been trialing a new in-house system with similar functionality and we hope it will provide an even better alternative. The earliest release date for this is the end of next week depending on trials and feedback. We will automatically move current advanced spam filtering customers onto the new service.
We will of course refund ay affected customers for any time during which their spam filtering has not been working as expected.
We are sorry this has happened, especially at such short notice, but we along with many other ISPs have been let down by the supplier.
We will provide further updates when we can and, as mentioned, hope to have the new service up an running towards the end of next week.
Hi,
There will be some essential firewall maintenance this evening between midnight and 3am. There will is likely to be a short outage of all services during this time, but services should be considered “at risk” for the duration.
We will update here when the work is completed.
We apologise in advance for any inconvience.
Duncan
Hi,
There will be a brief outage of around 15 minutes this evening between 7pm and 8pm. This is to allow migration of a customer acccount from the shared mail platform to a dedicated one. Customers will be unable to send of receive mail during this time, but no mail will be lost.
We apologise in advance for this down time.
A further post will be made here when the work has been completed.