Yahoo! blames! MONSTER! email! OUTAGE! on! CUT! CABLE! bungle! Yahoo! has apologised to customers, some of whom have been unable to access their email accounts since Thursday, after an underwater fibre cable was mistakenly severed. The Purple Palace blamed an unnamed outfit for the major mishap. It said in a status update on its website: We are aware that Yahoo Mail is slow or …
...my UK based business, handling UK data, using a UK data centre for storage and a UK ISP for email has its mail stored and handled outside the UK? That would have been nice to know when writing our data protection statements.
I knew BT used Yahoo, but I rather assumed they had some servers in Blighty. Anyone know where Yahoo's servers actually are? Are we talking EU or US?
So your UK based business is so tight that it relies on free mail services from a US based business. Recommend that as a business you use business grade services rather than cheap residential grade services. And while you're at it I also recommend you put a little effort into finding out what services you're getting. Reading your contract would be a start.
I work for an ISP and I'm constantly annoyed by business customers who pay for residential services and then moan that they're not getting business services.
@Grease Monkey: Oh, I quite agree about the business grade vs residential grade stuff, don't get me wrong. And yes, it's a tiny business run on a shoestring, and yes, it's run on residential grade services, and that's fine for me. That in itself is a business decision, and a perfectly valid one - just because it's a business doesn't mean everything has to be gold-plated. And when it was crap this week I didn't scream and shout, I just lived with it on the basis that yes, I'm getting what I pay for.
And if I were using a free mail service from a US-based business I'd agree with the rest of it too, but I'm paying the UK national telco for a service that includes e-mail - I just didn't expect 'btinternet' email accounts to be based overseas.
I don't object to BT outsourcing their email services, but when our country's main telecoms provider can't even host email within our own borders, that's just a bit, well, sad really.
"our country's main telecoms provider can't even host email"
Virginmedia outsource their email to Google. I wonder if it's a legal issue they are pre-empting by making email a clearly seperate and free offering so that they are not liable in any way for it's use, content, or reliablity.
IIRC there have been cases where a failed or broken "free" item or service have later been challenged in court such they were deemed to be an integral part of the primary goods or service and therefore included in any contractual agreement.
"...my UK based business, handling UK data, using a UK data centre for storage and a UK ISP for email has its mail stored and handled outside the UK? That would have been nice to know when writing our data protection statements."
Not necessarily. The UK is an island, and sometimes running a cable around an island is cheaper than trenching through the island. I imagine there are a large number of short 1km to 10km marine cables in use in the UK, because it is easier than going under roads and train tracks and through private property.
"I thought the whole point of TCP/IP and routing traffic was to automatically re-route traffic via an alternate path in the event of a link failure."
Unfortunately, budgets often don't allow enough capacity for full redundancy at most service providers. And even when their is redundancy, often the redundant links are "folded", meaning they follow the same route. And the other repair that was in process was probably one of their other major links.
"The issues were a result of an underwater fiber cable cut, caused by a third party while fixing a separate cable."
Wow what are the chances eh? really unfortunate sequence of events, well I hope the decoy ship is in place and the splices tested soon.
Pushes tinfoil hat back to see screen better.
That's not an intrinsic part of TCP/IP the protocol is irrelevant. You are right though it should be possible to reroute the traffic either automatically or manually to work round the break. Sounds like penny pinching to me.
The thing is though that this is what you get for using low cost or free services. What's the SLA on Yahoo! Mail? Customers complaining probably never checked when they signed up. Guaranteed percentage uptime? Guaranteed time to restore service? Compensation for outages? Bet there aren't any of those in the contract.
Outsourcing is one thing, but why choose probably the worst service available?
My late father in law got broadband from BT (against my advice), and the email never worked reliably from day one, despite him spending hours on line to their "support", who knew little.
I then spend hours trying to sort it when I visited (and I do know my way around). Despite my best efforts It only worked on a random basis, so in the end I just set up a freebie account elsewhere and accessed it via POP3. Somehow I managed to get the Yahoo to auto redirect, though I have never found that facility since.
That and the "home hub" are why I would never take broadband from BT
@Oldfogey
Unfortunately where I live I have little or no choice of supplier, however, you don't have to use BT email or the dreadful Homehub. Just set up an Imap gmail account or two in your email client, get yourself a Billion router, (or whatever your preference is), and away you go, just forget BT's accessories.... Mind, you're still stuck with BT's 'customer service'....
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