Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!eplrx7!lad
From: lad@eplrx7.UUCP (Lawrence Dziegielewski)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: UUNET unreliability
Message-ID: <561@eplrx7.UUCP>
Date: 17 Dec 87 19:31:46 GMT
Organization: E.I. DuPont Co. Engineering Physics Lab
Lines: 44


For all those on the net who subscribe to uunet;  has uunet been unreliable
lately?  

I administer the news feed here at DuPont and when uunet became available I
immiediately signed up.  The idea of having a 'highly reliable' connection
to a dedicated news/mail server appealed to me.  And paying a $3.00 connect
charge over Tymnet seemed a helluva lot cheaper than making long-distance
phone calls to Arlington, VA (dgis,  my old news feed).  So what happened?
Over the period of the last several weeks I have noticed that when calling
the uunet machine in the 1-3AM time frame daily I have about a 15% chance of
getting a connect.  What I usually have to do after that is spend about
20-30 minutes in the morning calling uunet with uucico in debug mode (so I
can see what's going on) to get a connect and get the news/mail.  Then,  of
course,  uunet goes down at 10AM (presumably for backups) and rarely comes
back online before 1PM.  I am writing this note just minutes after trying to
connect to uunet again and getting no answer from their modems (it's 2:30PM
EST).  What gives?

The end result of all of this is I now pay $600.-$700./month for news when
my initial uunet bills were in the $150.-$300. range. I use tymnet after hours
and the 800 line during peak times.  I'd just liek to get back to paying less
and getting the reliable connection I had when I first got on uunet.  I even
bought a Traliblazer modem to further reduce my online time (and charges)
but after three weeks of begging for help to get it running,  I'm giving up.
I have not been able to get a reliable connection to uunet with it and
several pleas for help to uunet!postmaster only got a set of instructions to
connect to uunet by mail.  

In closing,  I don't mean this to be an attack on the uunet machine and the
people who run it.  Honest.  I just want a reliable machine to call,  that's
all.  I know I could just go back to dialing another machine long-distance,
but that's not going to solve the problems.  I also know that I can't be the
only machine in the world that's having trouble.  I would like to hear from
others regarding their expirences with uunet.

Thanks,


-- 
        Lawrence A. Dziegielewski       |       E.I. Dupont Co.
        {uunet!dgis!psuvax1}!eplrx7!lad |       Engineering Physics Lab
        Cash-We-Serve 76127,104         |       Wilmington, Delaware 19898
        MABELL:  (302) 695-1311         |       Mail Stop: E357-318