Vodafone email down again!

[MRGS1]

Can anyone tell me why vodafone email is so unreliable?Today it's down again! Not a month goes by without an access issue, you cant access via vodafone wap on phone or bookmarks, 9026 not found etc etc.Have tiscali email and the service so far has never failed they say Google is pretty good.So why is it a badly written piece of software or cannot really be bothered to provide a service?

[pctech]

I don't know about Voda's setup but Google has massive clusters of servers spread across the globe and so a hardware outage is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever and I would suspect that Tiscali have a large cluster too (although it does have its issues sometimes as several colleagues have come into work fuming that their mail has goine down or that they cant access webmail.

You can access your Vodafone mail via the web from your PC can't you? Have you tried that today?

If so then it could be an APN DNS resolution issue rather than an issue with the mail service itself.

[Neil201]

Just checked my email and it's working fine now. I use SMTP/POP3 via my N73 and normally it's very reliable, only occasionally during busy periods do you sometimes have to wait a short while for the phone to connect to VF's SMTP server.

MRGS1: As for Tiscali being reliable, in my experience they are utterly useless and I was so annoyed at their level of service, I managed to get out of the contract early and go back to BT for home phone and Plusnet who are a good ISP.

[pctech]

I've used Virgin.net for a while on Dial-up and then broadband which was horrendous due to their naff DNS servers (didn't know about OpenDNS back then)

Then used Namesco who were OK but because they purchased all their transit bandwidth (link between them and the net) from Plusnet it used to get really slow in the evenings.

I use Newnet now who provide a good connection and have multiple connections to the likes of Level 3, PacketExchange, LINX, etc so get a good connection and I dabbled with O2 broadband which was good but could not get a stable connection where I live.

However in order to avoid changing my e-mail address if I switched providers or having to put a yahoo or hotmail address on my CV I registered my own domain and have my mail hosted by 1 and 1.

Thw whole thing only costs me about £13 a year and includes authenticated SMTP so you can use their SMTP servers and you get access to an SSL secured webmail interface.

No Disrespect to the good people of Voda but the idea of convergence doesn't work well I don't think, ISPs should stick to network connections and e-mail and phone companies (fixed and mobile) should stick to running their respective networks as its what they excel at.

Being a 'jack of all trades' isn't really realistic if you want to do something well.

[Neil201]

I'm in a similar position to you email-wise and have my own domain hosted with UK2 (with email forwarding to Plusnet), so emails sent from the phone via Voda's SMTP server are obviously identical to those sent from my desktop or laptop via Plusnet's SMTP server.

I've got Outlook set up on my laptop with two accounts, one for only outgoing with Voda and the other for incoming and outgoing with Plusnet, can't really ever say I've had a problem with Voda's SMTP server but then again I don't use one of their email addresses exclusively.

One thing I did find useful when in Denmark is that their SMTP server still allowed me access even though I was on one of their partner networks outside the UK. Certainly when I was roaming on Etisalat in the UAE back in Feb I couldn't send email from the phone so this must be a Voda thing between their networks and partner networks?

[MRGS1]

I'm in a similar position to you email-wise and have my own domain hosted with UK2 (with email forwarding to Plusnet), so emails sent from the phone via Voda's SMTP server are obviously identical to those sent from my desktop or laptop via Plusnet's SMTP server.

I've got Outlook set up on my laptop with two accounts, one for only outgoing with Voda and the other for incoming and outgoing with Plusnet, can't really ever say I've had a problem with Voda's SMTP server but then again I don't use one of their email addresses exclusively.

One thing I did find useful when in Denmark is that their SMTP server still allowed me access even though I was on one of their partner networks outside the UK. Certainly when I was roaming on Etisalat in the UAE back in Feb I couldn't send email from the phone so this must be a Voda thing between their networks and partner networks?It's still down trying to access from a bookmark on phone or vodafone live pages, remote mailbox on N95 seems to be able to access it, went for vodafone mail because it had everything at time you could get emails faxes voicemail all on phone it's getting too unreliable now perhaps no too many people use it that's the impression i get from customer services.

[pctech]

It's still down trying to access from a bookmark on phone or vodafone live pages, remote mailbox on N95 seems to be able to access it, went for vodafone mail because it had everything at time you could get emails faxes voicemail all on phone it's getting too unreliable now perhaps no too many people use it that's the impression i get from customer services.

Sounds to me like the mail servers themselves are ok (I'm assuming here that the remote mail function usese Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) for mail collection?

If so it sounds like there is an issue with reaching the webmail front end server, this could be because:

a) Theres an issue with DNS lookups on the AP
b) The server machine is up but the actual server process for the interface is down otherwise malfunctioning (I hope they have had the good sense to separate the hardware hosting the webmail interface from the actual mail server process itself to ensiure that it has full access to a machine's CPU, memory and hard drive/NAS connection)
c) there's and issue with the server machine's networking hardware or the kit such as routers that are connected between it and the mailserver and rest of Voda's network.

Won't someone nip in the data centre and have a look or fire up whatsup gold (not sure if they use it for network monitoring) or ring Germany and get Vodafone information systems to have a look at the hardware in their DC?

C'mon before MRGS1 gets mad :D