High volume of traffic slows e-mail

In the past few days, bumper-to-bumper traffic circling campus and the long lines at the food courts aren't the only slow-moving things on campus.\nStudents, professors and faculty attempting to access IU's Webmail service recently have been waiting minutes -- and even hours -- for the familiar blue inbox to appear on their computer screen.\nAccording to the University Information Techno-logy Services Web site, the delay to retrieve e-mail on Webmail is primarily caused by the large number of students and faculty attempting to access e-mail at once. \nAlthough the e-mail server at IU is designed to handle heavy traffic, UITS employees emphasized that during the first few days of the school year, glitches are still being smoothed out and the server will improve by the end of the week.\nUITS has been aware of the recent problem, and posted information about the Webmail inconvenience on its Web page. \n"The IUB Webmail service is currently experiencing a slow response time, and system administrators expect service to return to normal once the system load decreases," according to the IU Network and System Notices Web page.\nIn addition to the long waits at the Indiana Memorial Union computers, the difficulty with Webmail has frustrated students living on campus because in some cases it has taken over an hour just to enter a username and password.\n"This is really frustrating," said Allison Page, a senior who lives in Wright Quad. "I clicked to enter Webmail over an hour ago, and it still hasn't even gotten to the sign-in page. I can't read any of my messages, and if a professor sends out an e-mail, I won't know what to do."\nUITS is also reporting uploading difficulties on Webmail. The system is failing to upload large e-mail attachments when composing new messages. On it's Web page, UITS said this glitch should be straightened out very soon.\nAdam Shepard, a sales representative at the Campus Connection computer store in the IMU, said he believes the problem has to do with the large freshman class, in addition to technical problems.\n"Webmail is probably running so slow because this is the largest freshmen class in 50 years, and so many people are trying to access it at once," Shepard said. "Hopefully what they will do is increase the bandwidth and allow for them to have more people log on."\nThe Pine system is another way to access e-mail. \nSome professors have noticed the problem, and emphasize that until Webmail is readily accessible, faculty should communicate with their students in class.\n"I haven't really received any complaints, but my classes are smaller so I usually don't use Webmail to send out messages," said Steve Smith, a broadcasting professor in the School of Journalism. "I can definitely see that it would be very difficult for professors with large classes that wish to contact students immediately with information about their courses."\nFreshman Tyler Pace said he has been frustrated with the Webmail system, and noticed yesterday that Oncourse was down as well.\n"My professor was complaining about that today," Pace said. "It's really been a nuisance because I'm afraid that one of my professors is sending out mail and I can't read it"