Topic 'E-mail POP access down?' in forum 'Cox HSI' - dslreports.com

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 07:11:10 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : Yeah, I just got a mail from Friday. Well, everyting is going according to the plan/alert message from Cox.

Time to un-pin this thread?

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:22:52 EDT

anon posted : i'm happy everything working although i had to call for password reset
and my hold time wait was short.so all is well and i will have to stay with outlook from cox too much to change. thanks for you guys info. okla city/moore area

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:42:19 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : Maybe my mid-week lost mails will show up!

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:38:41 EDT

BillRoland posted : I'm now getting e-mail as far back as last WEDNESDAY that is starting to show up.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 09:09:59 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : I can now logon, get e-mail from Friday, Sunday and messages coming thorugh that are sent today. Still have a gap for Sunday mails.

UPDATE: Seems, just as Cox have on their alert update, the weekend mail is trickling in.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:47:57 EDT

johnburns posted : Likewise here - in Oklahoma City, I am receiving email for 2 accounts - tho i'm not sure all of it has been processed yet. Anyway, it's up.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 07:28:37 EDT

SoonerAl posted :

said by MarkRH:

Looks like pop.east.cox.net is still down for the count (Oklahoma City). Timing out in Thunderbird. I only get email sent from Cox there so it doesn't affect me much. Haven't tried sending email, however.

Back during the days when I was moving around so much (dial-up) and changing ISPs somewhat frequently, I set up a separate email service so I'd have a consistent email address and I would only have to change the forwarding email address in that one spot rather than update my email in a bazillion places. I'm still using it.

FWIW...

I am now receiving email on our two Cox POP accounts. We are in the OKC market...

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 01:39:42 EDT

MarkRH posted : Looks like pop.east.cox.net is still down for the count (Oklahoma City). Timing out in Thunderbird. I only get email sent from Cox there so it doesn't affect me much. Haven't tried sending email, however.

Back during the days when I was moving around so much (dial-up) and changing ISPs somewhat frequently, I set up a separate email service so I'd have a consistent email address and I would only have to change the forwarding email address in that one spot rather than update my email in a bazillion places. I'm still using it.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 23:13:29 EDT

ajwees41 posted : Yep working, but slow retrieval in Omaha

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 20:25:54 EDT

anon posted : Nope, still no email in Hampton Roads. Worst provider ever.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:46:45 EDT

Ender3rd posted : According to the Facebook page people in Virginia, Nebraska and Kansas are reporting that they are now receiving email. Others (including myself) can now access their primary email account. It appears Cox is beginning their "rolling access" to accounts.
--
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. (Charlie Reese)

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:43:56 EDT

digiblur posted :

said by dlarkin_dc:

Some get billed through e-mail. That is, the invoice arrives by e-mail and there's a link to the service provider's site for a secure pay.

Yes, but you should always keep the website addresses to bills you are responsible for. Plus there are other alternative methods.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:18:43 EDT

betterdan posted : I am in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and I am now able to log into my email using Windows Live Mail without an error. I also have 3 emails in my inbox from this weekend. 2 show received yesterday and 1 is showing received today at around 12:21 am.
I can also log into my email via the Cox web mail site which I couldn't do yesterday or earlier today.
So it looks like they finally are bringing things back up.

Edit: They just updated the page and are saying this now...

"As of 6:00 pm ET, service restoration efforts are progressing. The system is beginning to come back online. Service could be intermittent as we work to fully recover. Some customers may be able to access emails starting tonight. This is a lengthy process and we still do not know when service will be restored for all customers. Once your email access is restored, you will immediately be able to send and receive new messages.
Currently, all messages that have been received since Friday are queued in our system and we anticipate delivering messages to customers on a rolling basis as we bring the platform back online. Your queued emails will arrive gradually and may not be delivered in chronological order. You may continue to receive these queued emails over the course of several days after your service is restored.
We are happy to share this positive progress with you and will remain steadfastly focused on this effort until fully resolved. We deeply regret the impact this has had, especially at a time when many customers are busy preparing for holiday celebrations with their families and friends. Please check back for another update at 9 p.m. ET."

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 18:11:07 EDT

BillRoland posted :

said by dlarkin_dc:

Yeah, it's a dream.

"...an issue within the email storage platform that supports Cox Residential Email" leaves a lot to interpretation but it might be as much as we ever get.

I'd imagine you're right, I doubt we'll get anything clearer than that.
--
Ron Paul 2012 »www.ronpaul2012.com
Beyond AM. Beyond FM. (((XM)))

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 16:56:25 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : Yeah, it's a dream.

"...an issue within the email storage platform that supports Cox Residential Email" leaves a lot to interpretation but it might be as much as we ever get.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:57:03 EDT

sullyguy posted : More thorough status up now - no intimate details but at least a lot more info.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:47:35 EDT

KahunaNui posted :

said by No_Strings:

I've never seen a full, factual, detailed accounting of a major outage by a large company.

Ditto that - after 25 years doing this.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:34:16 EDT

chip89 posted : You think they would of fought to put more backups in then just one system.

Re: E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:12:50 EDT

BillRoland posted : I find it interesting that Outlook reports two different errors for two different Cox email accounts. For one e-mail it says "The operation timed out waiting for a response from the receiving (POP) server," the other e-mail says "The e-mail server rejected your login."

This is pure speculation on my part, but my guess is we're not looking at hardware failure, but some kind of update that was rolled out and started acting flaky, so they tried to roll it back and that's when everything went down the sewer. What we're waiting on now is for the vendor to figure out how to get it back working.
--
Ron Paul 2012 »www.ronpaul2012.com
Beyond AM. Beyond FM. (((XM)))

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:48:44 EDT

No_Strings posted : It would be nice, but as someone who has been in IT for a long time and with first-hand knowledge about several incidents which resulted in very high profile outages (bank ATM network, on-line retailer and others), you will probably be disappointed.

A. No one wants the liability. If WidgetCo publicly said "Our factory was shut down because an Acme server died and they couldn't fix it for 6 days" they would most likely be sued. In fact, the Acme server might have been brought down by a failed KoreaCo memory stick. The memory modules were supplied by SiliconCo. A replacement part was shipped via SpeedyCo, lost in transit and eventually installed backwards by a WidgetCo tech, etc.

B. It will take a while to sort out what went wrong.

C. Most of the time, it's human error - either at the root or along the way to exacerbate the situation.

I've never seen a full, factual, detailed accounting of a major outage by a large company.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:34:02 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : ajwee41,

Yup, the servers fell like dominos. But what triggered the whole failure? What took the initial server down, then the failover servers? Corrupt data, overload of data, did a server glitch start it off, was some outside influence like a UPS failure in the data center... just what exactly happened?

We deserve to know and it will cut through any consumer-paranoia that's brewing... unless it was so fundamental Cox can only look foolish. Even then, I'd prefer a foolish honest ISP.
--
Cox Preferred HSI~SB6120~Grandstream HT502~E4500
OTA (...and proud of it!)
VOIPo

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:16:52 EDT

anon posted : Oklahoma City afternoon still down

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:08:31 EDT

ajwees41 posted : per the article looks like only one backup and the samething that happened to the primary happened to the secondary.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:56:11 EDT

BillRoland posted : Heads should roll over this one and we should all get a credit on our bills. Whether or not people should use the ISP's email is not the issue, they offer the service and its a reasonable expectation to expect it to work. I don't really care when its out for 15 minutes in the middle of the night due to a maintenance window, but going on 48 hours with no end is sight is not acceptable.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:35:38 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : I would love to know what caused neither of the backup systems come online!

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:32:15 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : Some get billed through e-mail. That is, the invoice arrives by e-mail and there's a link to the service provider's site for a secure pay.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:24:03 EDT

digiblur posted : Can't pay bills due to email? Confused on that one. I never needed email at all to pay bills.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:59:31 EDT

anon posted : This is really fustrating. I need a primary account to pay some bills, but I can't because of COX.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 12:09:55 EDT

dmorack posted : Restoration not expected today.

"Our teams are making progress in our email service restoration efforts. Through our investigation, we have isolated the cause of the failure to the email system platform which ultimately affected both the primary and secondary failover (back-up) systems. Currently, all incoming messages are queued in our system and we expect to deliver messages to customers on a rolling basis as we bring the systems back online.

Teams across all levels of our organization remain intensely focused on the restoration efforts. Unfortunately, we do not expect services to be restored today. We do understand the impact this is having on our customers, which is why we have deployed every resource possible to working this issue. While we are focused on restoring email access as quickly as possible, the multiple components and processes that make up our email system require care, and some time, to bring them back online."

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 10:04:18 EDT

digiblur posted : I would have never known if it wasn't for this thread. Haven't ever used the Cox email. Never did in case I needed to switch providers.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 09:41:32 EDT

Sentinel posted : Appears to be down in FL too.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 09:31:19 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : Cox Support update... no end in sight.

Summary
Email Outage Update as of 9:30 am, December 16th

Detail
Since our update at 1 a.m., our teams continue to make progress in restoring email service to our customers in the Midwest and East Coast regions. Teams across all levels of our organization are focused on the recovery and we truly apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. At this time we cannot provide an estimated time for recovery, but will continue to work around the clock until email service is restored.
--
Cox Preferred HSI 12/5~SB6120~Grandstrem HT502~E4500
OTA (...and proud of it!)
VOIPo

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 09:09:51 EDT

KennerLAN posted :

said by betterdan:

...We will provide additional updates by 9 am ET.

And here it is past 9 am ET and same message with no update. Anybody surprised?

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 08:40:04 EDT

anon posted : I have been down in CONNECTICUT SINCE FRIDAY

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 08:25:52 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : During the week up to this. I know of two e-mails that were sent that I never received. There may have been one other but I can't confirm it.

So I have 98% faith that all our mail is hunky dory.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:32:21 EDT

betterdan posted : They just posted another update...

"Restoration continues and we are actively exploring multiple approaches to restore email services. All available resources are engaged across multiple teams.These teams will continue working around the clock until your email is restored. Based on our investigation, event logs, and other data available to us, we have no indication that this incident is the result of a security breach that would put customer information at risk. We will provide additional updates by 9 am ET. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this is causing you."

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:07:47 EDT

chuckkk posted : It looks to me like cox decided to mess with the pop servers vs webmail servers. MS had the same sort of problem some years ago, and it was several days before things got sorted out.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 22:46:28 EDT

ajwees41 posted :

said by BillRoland:

What I'm concerned about most is what is happening to e-mail that has been sent to me during this outage? Did it bounce? Did it go into oblivion? I don't use this address for business critical stuff but I would be upset to find out people have sent me stuff that never arrived.

. It's being said that incoming mail is fine and will be available when the server comes back online.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 22:05:34 EDT

anon posted : Cox will never give us a credit. They are not the type of company that would do the right thing.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 21:48:32 EDT

BillRoland posted : What I'm concerned about most is what is happening to e-mail that has been sent to me during this outage? Did it bounce? Did it go into oblivion? I don't use this address for business critical stuff but I would be upset to find out people have sent me stuff that never arrived.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 21:22:19 EDT

planet posted : $50 off our next bill would seem appropriate.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:51:35 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted :
FWIW - From the support section of the Cox site...

Summary
Email Outage Update as of 8:30 pm, December 15th

Detail
As of 8:30 pm ET, the effort to restore residential customer email service continues. This work will continue through the night. We will provide additional updates early Sunday morning. We have no indication of any security breach that would put customer information at risk. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. All technical teams are fully engaged and committed to restoring service as quickly as we can.
--
Cox Preferred HSI 12/5~SB6120~Grandstrem HT502~E4500
OTA (...and proud of it!)
VOIPo

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:19:33 EDT

ajwees41 posted : Maybe they are checking to see if the server was also the cause of the outage the other day.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 20:00:33 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : ajwees41,

Thanks for posting the server issue. 26hrs to replace a server seems crazy to me. I couldn't let my customers be out of service for that long over such a fundamental.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 19:23:22 EDT

ajwees41 posted : the email server went down and needs to be replaced

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 19:15:34 EDT

johnburns posted : You are so correct - I am concerned about security of my email account and would appreciate some sort of response to let me know if security has been compromised - and what needs to be done by the customer to overcome it. More information would help relieve the concern of Cox customers so much.

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:35:48 EDT

anon posted : Still no email in Hampton Roads! AAAHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:06:34 EDT

dlarkin_dc posted : Yep. 24hrs and counting... I read a post saying Sunday!

One thing that bugs me is that we're given no information. Saying 6am and then needing double the time to resolve the problem looks very bad. It looks like they can't even estimate a fix to a system failure that should have never been an issue. It looks like gross incompotence.

All that that makes for grumbly customers. If we'd some information we could be more understanding. Unless that would make it look worse than a grossly incompotent scenario.

Oh well. I'm sure a few of us are getting closer to moving to FiOS over this.

At a minimum, I want (a) a good explaination about why the e-mail has been hinky for a week then down for over 24hrs, and (b) assurance that my e-mail has been secure.

--
Cox Preferred HSI 12/5~SB6120~Grandstream HT502~E4500
OTA (...and proud of it!)
VOIPo

Re: [VA] E-mail POP access down?

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:35:54 EDT

BillRoland posted : 24 hours now. This is now at a point where its ridiculous.