No Email Access

[#1]

What's a supervisor going to tell you that an agent can't? They will only say they are aware of the problem and will fix it as soon as possible. 

[#2]

Hi@JonoH,

Thanks or your reply and link which indeed does work. I shall add that to one of my saved web addresses.

However, my point is how is the average idiot like myself find that link in the first place? My thought process is: oh I'm having problems accessing emails or the internet I'll go to the home page of my internet provider and see if there are any problems. On that home page there isn't  any mention or a link to Service Status - it should be even if there are no problems. Of course now that you've told me there is a Service Status page I can now search for Service Status Plusnet and find the same link but wouldn't think to do that in the first instance.

Take as an example your gas or electricity supply has failed do you think oh I'll search for service status of my supplier or would you go to their website and look for a link?

Of course one of the downsides from Plusnet's point of view is that if you hang your dirty washing on the line on the homepage then people will be put off joining. By the way I've been with Plusnet/Force9 since 1998 so I do appreciate how good it is 99.9999% of the time and I see no reason to change.

[#3]

Clearly I do not have detailed knowledge of what’s where but I do have some understanding of how email works in general.

External mail services generally keep trying to deliver emails for 5 days. Inbound mail to Plusnet lands on their edge CloudMark servers, not their email platforms, which users access. Mail is AV and spam filtered across to the mail platforms and delivered to individual mailboxes.

During the systems outage (do not assume it was email systems!!) mail may well have not been shifted around the network. Having fixed the fault(s) it is likely to take time to get mail shuffled to where it needs to go.

I’ve seen mail dribbling in through the day and get markedly better by 18:00 this evening, albeit still sluggish.

Outbound email remains problematic.

These issues are only impacting users with user names in the latter half of the alphabet.

[#4]

Same here.
Still very patchy logging onto webmail. Plus Outlook accepted emails periodically, but unable to send.
Very frustrating

[#5]

What IS the problem. Still no emails downloading. 

[#6]

<<These issues are only impacting users with user names in the latter half of the alphabet.>>

C'mon. Where does this guff come from? My username starts with the second letter of the alphabet.

Unfounded assertions like this do nothing to help others who might belive them.

[#7]

Well the emails were being queued on the sending servers! And it looks like I haven't lost anything (probably).

I surmise this, because I get some domain emails redirected to my F9 account, and I was able to add an extra recipient into the forward rule on my domain config yesterday, and the missing emails from the day before all poured in to the new address... and then today, those same missing emails have turned up in my F9 mailbox. So for the domain forward to still work, F9 must not yet have taken receipt of the emails at that point.

As to what went wrong, would love to know too! I wonder if it is like the time that the cleaner unplugged the server... back in the very very old days!

[#8]

Really

[#9]

Regrettably the "update" on the service failure provides neither explanation nor guidance.  I shall just add the details of my experience in case it helps with the ongoing efforts to identify and solve the problem.

I use the Thunderbird email client (and have Plusnet as my ISP).  Like many others, I have been unable to receive or send emails in my Plusnet email account since yesterday (10 Nov) morning.  I have been patient, relying on the assurance in the service-status notice that the problem had been identified and was being worked on.

Today (11 Nov) I have been able to download inbound emails addressed to me.  Obviously these have been delayed.  I don't know if any have gone missing.

But the problem is that I cannot send outbound messages, or replies, at all. Whenever I try to do so, I get a popup notification with the heading "Send Message Error" which says "The message could not be sent because the connection to the outgoing server (SMTP) relay.plus.net was lost in the middle of the transaction.  Try again".

Needless to say, further attempts simply result in the same popup notification.  So I cannot send outward emails at all.  This is - fairly obviously - not an acceptable or satisfactory situation.

EDIT:  I have just tried the workaround of logging into the Plusnet Webmail site.  I can log in to my account and see inbound emails.  But again, I cannot send outbound emails from Plusnet webmail.  This is a serious problem - for me and no doubt many others.  Plusnet is now at risk of serious reputational damage.

[#10]

The intermittent problem with sending mail (i.e. connections to relay.plus.net) appears to be very much the same as the problem with intermittent access to force9/plusnet hosted websites as posted  HERE 

There are allegedly 2 different SMTP servers, one of which is mostly working correctly and the other isn't working at all. Presumably, a load balancer somewhere (or just the DNS response itself) selects one of the 2 possible server IP addresses so it's very much hit 'n' miss which you get pointed to on any particular attempt and therefore whether you can or cannot send mail successfully


Plusnet SMTP relay servers

212.159.8.107    Accepting connections and appears to be mostly working
212.159.9.107    NOT accepting connections

> telnet 212.159.8.107 25
>
> 220 avasout-peh-003 smtp relay.plus.net
> ehlo xxxxxxxx.xxx
> 250-avasout-peh-003 hello [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx], pleased to meet you
> 250-HELP
> 250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
> 250-SIZE 104857600
> 250-PIPELINING
> 250-8BITMIME
> 250-STARTTLS
> 250 OK
> quit
> 221 avasout-peh-003 smtp closing connection
> Connection to host lost.


> telnet 212.159.9.107 25
>
> long wait ...
>
> ... No Response whatsoever

It's "interesting" to note that all SMTP/HTTP/FTP servers with an IP address 212.159.9.xxx do not appear to be accessible at all or are just not accepting connections and/or not working sensibly in general.

Once again, some good old fashioned Yorkshire honesty is clearly needed here please ... rather than what appears to be more like typical BT/PN PR BS in the service status posts


It *may* be possible to bypass the problems for now by changing your SMTP settings to the working SMTP server IP address rather than the usual relay.plus.net and having a 50% chance of getting the duff server. However, do bear in mind that server IP addresses can and do change ... especially so when PN are running round in circles tinkering with things various

[#11]

Plusnet webmail had always worked okay for me over the years but this is just pathetic! The issue is still not fixed. The webmail page loads. Then stops. Emails arrive. Then don't. Don't know if I've "lost" any emails at all.

So when are Plusnet going to fix this for good? It's been 2 days now. It's a joke.

[#12]

Two days and still unable to send or receive emails. There was a very brief 'glitch' around 4:30 pm when I actually got 3 emails in my inbox, then It failed to connect again! Been down again all evening. Plusnet has customers who pay for a service, email is an integral and fundamental part of that service and when that service goes down they should at least be ar**d to explain to frustrated customers what the issue is and not rely on 'wing and a prayer' we hope status notices. When will this problem be rectified????

[#13]

That's a useful and informative post from mikeb. 

I don't have the tech expertise to tinker with server IP addresses. 

But I very much echo his call for "some good old-fashioned Yorkshire honesty".  Plusnet need to be a lot more forthcoming than just the stock "we're working on it" formula.

[#14]

Got some functionality back on the webpage in the last couple of hours or so, but again very slow and unreliable.

[#15]

So you know all the answers?

The advice shared with the SUs advises that the problem being addressed yesterday impacted a particular segment of the user base.  With the practical knowledge we have of the system services, that does have a good deal of credence.

What experience of running IT systems do you bring to the discussion?  Certainly ranting does not help anyone.