This is gonna be geeky. But let me weave you a tale of how Christmas newsletters can down your internet connection much like a Denial of Service attack.
First you have to have hundreds of people sending newsletters larger than 4mb each, to hundreds of people.
Missionaries have to stay in communication with their support base, so they send out newsletters. None so popular as the Christmas newsletter, often filled with pictures and longer than usual. Everyone is familiar with a family Christmas letter. Well missionaries are no different.
THEN add to that, the fact that missionaries move all over the world. That means email gets forwarded.
THEN add to that, that people SEND newsletters to missionaries who love to read them.
And you get a lot of email activity.
Couple that with a slow internet connection, dash on a little 'we all decided to send it on the same day' and bingo... NETWORK NIGHTMARE.
So, last night I realized the network was slowing down, our up(tx) bandwidth was 100% utilized because we were sending out newsletters.... hundreds and hundreds of large emails.
BUT THEN also our down(rx) bandwidth was slow because of the way satellite works when up(tx) is 100% pegged.
Our email servers weren't pegged, I have divided them up enough with their respective responsibilities and networks, and have even put a packeteer in place to prioritize the right traffic weight so that work can get through.
The trick is, that when vsat is pegged in either direction, the other suffers. But, also people sending out these emails sent to people NOT here which invokes forwarding.
So...
You're in the U.S., you send me a newsletter at my email here, but I'm in Africa at the time, so it comes INTO my server over my satellite link which says 'hey, he's in Africa,' then it goes BACK out the same link.
If that email is 10mb huge, then suddenly my email servers and internet link just had to process a whole lot of data for someone who wasn't even here.
And that is what has happened over the last 12 hours.
A perfect email storm of email going, coming, coming then going, and all of it killing our network link so that no work can get done.
Now... call me the Grinch, because I had to deliver the sad news that I had to delete the sending of newsletters from the offending parties that sent hundreds of very largehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif emails out at the same time.
I didn't want to have to do it, but I had to find a way to clear things up so we could get priority information through.
So if you're expecting a newsletter from someone you support, and you don't get it... you CAN blame the responsible network administrator...
or you can kindly wait for it to come late, and be understanding of resends. And if you really want you can send them this link (but don't send the email until after Christmas (-;
HOW TO KEEP YOUR EMAIL SMALL
