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From what I can work out, it looks like the new pop3.xtra.co.nz and send.xtra.co.nz is hosted in Australia, which puts all your data under the Australian privacy and surveillance laws.
Not to mention if the Southern Cross Cable goes down (again) your e-mail will completely stop - and even e-mails between Towns and Cities in New Zealand will fail.
Not to mention the Xtra delays and slugglyness a cross ditch latency would be on Xtra's already slow international links.
Ping has started ...
PING send.tnz.yahoo.com (124.108.96.68): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 124.108.96.68: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=48.806 ms
64 bytes from 124.108.96.68: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=48.569 ms
64 bytes from 124.108.96.68: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=53.012 ms
64 bytes from 124.108.96.68: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=49.472 ms
--- send.tnz.yahoo.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 20% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 48.569/49.965/53.012/1.790 ms
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss. Yet strangely enough, I was able to send a 11MB attachment to Godaddy support at around 8:30PM.
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 153.176/167.030/187.817/15.424 ms
traceroute to send.tnz.yahoo.com (124.108.96.68), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.69.253 (192.168.69.253) 4.201 ms 1.545 ms 1.309 ms
2 * 219-88-74-1.jetstream.xtra.co.nz (219.88.74.1) 32.555 ms 31.052 ms
3 mdr-ip03e-3-1-0.akbr3.global-gateway.net.nz (202.50.236.114) 69.836 ms * *
4 ge-1-3-0-42.akbr3.global-gateway.net.nz (202.50.236.109) 32.556 ms 27.519 ms 27.410 ms
5 so-1-1-1.sybr5.global-gateway.net.nz (202.50.232.222) 50.109 ms 51.545 ms 53.218 ms
6 yahoo.sybr5.global-gateway.net.nz (202.50.236.34) 51.410 ms 53.344 ms 51.164 ms
7 gi1-1.bas2.aue.yahoo.com (203.84.216.206) 46.677 ms 51.530 ms gi1-2.bas1.aue.yahoo.com (203.84.216.210) 45.725 ms
8 * * *
etc
C:\Documents and Settings\BG>tracert pop3.xtra.co.nz
Tracing route to pop1.tnz.mail.vip.aue.yahoo.com [124.108.96.66]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.69.253
2 31 ms 17 ms 31 ms 219-88-74-1.jetstream.xtra.co.nz [219.88.74.1]
3 * 72 ms * MDR-IP03e-3-1-0.akbr3.global-gateway.net.nz [202
.50.236.114]
4 32 ms 30 ms 29 ms ge-2-3-0-42.akbr3.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.
236.113]
5 37 ms 53 ms 39 ms so1-1-1.sybr5.global-gateway.net.nz [202.50.232.
10]
6 46 ms 192.168.1.253 reports: Destination protocol unreachable.
Trace complete.
Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!
Might be worth reading the privacy policies of YahooXtra
I have mixed feelings about overseas dependencies, however in saying that, the majority of our content is overseas - if we lost international connectivity, things would become quite unstuck rather quickly (as people grow tired of trademe).
Remember that unlike VOIP, you can afford to have a little bit of latency and I would go out on a limb and say that ~50ms is fine. My own mail server is hosted in the USA
There probably would be some kind of back up plan should that occur, I'm guessing.
exportgoldman:
Ah, Content, and Communications.
I don't mind 24, Desperate Housewifes, and YouTube being hosted overseas, but why should my ability to communicate with fellow citizens and my businesses communications have to rely on another countries infrastructure and 2000KM of under ocean cable with extreme cyclones on the rise and the network connectivity and power supplies of an Australian city ringed by fire during Summer? Do you think this will Increase, decrease or make my Xtra e-mail service levels remain the same?
Put another way, would you be happy with your companies PABX or Voicemail system being hosted in Australia, because hosting my e-mail there would have the same effects during a outage
I ping 60ms-80ms on xnet, but with 3 hour hold times on Xtra's support lines today, and already 21 pages of comments in the NZ Herald article by evening and forums filled with how the web registration servers are overloading and erroring out, I image the Xtra hosted e-mail servers are not being used by a lot of customers right now.
Xtra hosts 800,000 e-mail accounts. Oracle for their ISP E-Mail System sizing specs for all webmail/POP3/SMTP traffic reccommend 1.2MBits/100 Users. This equals around a 10GBits connection to whatever Australian datacentre Yahoo is hosted at.
The only plan would be to have hot configuration standby or replication servers in New Zealand, and if this was the case, wouldn't you use the NZ Servers to service the e-mail users, and the Australian ones to service, oh, I don't know, the Australian e-mail clients?
This is from the same ISP company had their DNS Servers on the same subnet and switch. You think they have hot backup servers in NZ they arn't using to service clients?
; <<>> DiG 9.3.4 <<>> dnsc1.xtra.co.nz
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 57580
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;dnsc1.xtra.co.nz. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
dnsc1.xtra.co.nz. 300 IN A 202.27.158.40
; <<>> DiG 9.3.4 <<>> dnsc2.xtra.co.nz
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2333
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;dnsc2.xtra.co.nz. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
dnsc2.xtra.co.nz. 300 IN A 202.27.156.72
;; Query time: 43 msec
;; SERVER: 202.27.184.3#53(202.27.184.3)
;; WHEN: Tue Aug 21 09:00:53 2007
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 50
Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!
exportgoldman:
Not to mention the Xtra delays and slugglyness a cross ditch latency would be on Xtra's already slow international links.
Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!
Well, some people are doing it quite happily with things like MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, IRC, Skype, VOIP services (A few people here use aussie providers), email (hotmail, yahoo mail, geekzonemail even), forums/messsage boards. A lot of call centers now operate out of other countries without any 'issues', providing that the implementation of the links has been done right.
People already are opting for VOIP services here in NZ, which if implemented the wrong way routes the traffic out of their LAN, onto the internet and back just to call another extenstion in the same building - yet I don't see you launching a crusade on 'rectifying such a travesty'. Given that the link to Aus is rather stable (check out global gateways map), one expects few if any disruptions though the potential is there. Of course, if a NZ data center got flooded, lost power for a long period, or lost connectivity - you'd still have the same results.
As for the cyclones affecting deep underwater cables, can you provide any evidence of this, or is this just scare mongering (which places like the herald have been doing recently)?
You'd think that given the two companies Xtra and Yahoo, that they'd separate them onto different servers. For instance, I was able to pop my mail fine this weekend, it was the sending part that I had to update. However, once updated, they appeared to be working fine.
May I remind you that I successfully sent a 11MB email through a SMTP server with even higher latency? And it worked fine. No errors or retries required.
How does a 60ms-80ms ping prevent you from sending emails?
In this hypothetical situation, perhaps because the bulk of the servers are over there.
Are you referring to alien and terminator, which were replaced with dnsc1 and dnsc2 and these are given to your router by default now.
The entire argument has shifted away from latency (which got debunked rather quickly) and privacy issues into a 'lets blame xtra for everything' thread.
While it would be good to respond to all of these points, the term 'feeding the trolls' comes to mind.
In my opinion, the chances of a complete outage to the mail servers is extremely low and that the probability of domestic or localised outage is more likely. In terms of the DNS servers, those newer servers appear to be facing the brunt of connections with the old alien and terminator servers not appearing as perferred or alternative connections when connecting, they also appear not to suffer the same shortcomings previously discussed.
I'm not going to try and second guess what Xtra have planned, however I would strongly suspect that there would be some back up plan there. Most server providers do.
Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!
cokemaster:In my opinion, the chances of a complete outage to the mail servers is extremely low and that the probability of domestic or localised outage is more likely. In terms of the DNS servers, those newer servers appear to be facing the brunt of connections with the old alien and terminator servers not appearing as perferred or alternative connections when connecting, they also appear not to suffer the same shortcomings previously discussed.
I'm not going to try and second guess what Xtra have planned, however I would strongly suspect that there would be some back up plan there. Most server providers do.
exportgoldman:
Hello Everyone,
From what I can work out, it looks like the new pop3.xtra.co.nz and send.xtra.co.nz is hosted in Australia, which puts all your data under the Australian privacy and surveillance laws.
How does everyone feel about this?
Regards,
Tyler Rosolowski
Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!
The entire argument has shifted away from latency (which got debunked rather quickly) and privacy issues into a 'lets blame xtra for everything' thread.
While it would be good to respond to all of these points, the term 'feeding the trolls' comes to mind.
In my opinion, the chances of a complete outage to the mail servers is extremely low and that the probability of domestic or localised outage is more likely.
In terms of the DNS servers, those newer servers appear to be facing the brunt of connections with the old alien and terminator servers not appearing as perferred or alternative connections when connecting, they also appear not to suffer the same shortcomings previously discussed.
I'm not going to try and second guess what Xtra have planned, however I would strongly suspect that there would be some back up plan there. Most server providers do.
exportgoldman:
OK, First A roundup from around the web - Looks like others (Including John Campbell) have the same type of concerns I do.
Xtra email is now in Australia ?!?!
http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/08/21/xtra-email-is-now-in-australia/#comment-113462
Customers furious over Xtra’s migration to Yahoo
http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/Story/tabid/209/articleID/32963/Default.aspx
There was one more I wanted to include, which basically broke down the privacy statement of Yahoo!Xtra! which basically said any data you put on their servers, they owned, could publish, distribute, or get royalities for.
exportgoldman:
Cokemaster is coming to the defence of Telecom in a big way, are you just a fan, or do you work for them :-) No offence, just curious, because you are making statements with no information to backup your claims.
exportgoldman:
Latency issue was not debunked, I still think it will be a issue, but the fact is they had no load on the servers because of registration faults. I see people complaining in the forums now about timeouts on the e-mail servers now the masses can register.
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barf: the recent increase in volume of spam to my customer's email inboxes is beyond tipping point. I have begun advising my customers to ditch @xtra.co.nz email accounts if possible.
when even a free-software email server filters spam better than Xtra!Yahoo's there is a serious problem.. or is my pentium 200 email server that much better than Xtras??? hard to believe really.
Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!
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