Ozemail has moved quickly to assure customers that despite the delay in delivery, no mail would be lost.
-We cannot rule out the virus [as the cause of the problem], there has been a clear increase in traffic through the servers," explained OzEmail PR manager David Bathur.
The problem however appears to be limited to OzEmail mail servers with leading ISPs such as Telstra, Dingo Blue, Pacific Internet and Optus all denying that the virus had had any adverse effects, or has lead to a spike in traffic.
A spokesperson for Optus technical engineers blamed Microsoft operating systems for any interruption, but took pains to point out that Optus had not experienced any difficulty.
Telstra spokesperson Stewart Grey said that its network had not experienced any increase in traffic on the Big Pond Network.
However, Iain McKimm, director of network and operations at Pacific Internet, pointed to the company's policy of scanning e-mails for viruses before they reach their targets.
-It is not something we tend to advertise, it is more like an added extra that we include with the service without charging for it," McKimm said. -What this virus filter means is that we can literally catch it before it starts to proliferate throughout the network."
OzEmail customers who have been effected by the delay can find out more information at the system status Web site.
My personal experience leads to the suspicion that Ozemail have overloaded their infrastructure.
I have often had trouble sending and receiving mail via Ozemail mail servers. Dead spots regularly occur during peak periods between 9 and 10 AM on business days and at other irregular times. There seem to be more of the occaisional slowdowns of late since the OneTel collapse when Ozemail took on many extra customers.
Strangely even though I have reported the problem on several occaisions Ozemail tech support staff always seem to end up suggesting a problem with my system or phone line and invariably want me to throttle back to 33kbps. This has lead me to open an account with another national ISP - lo and behold no network slowdown or mail server problems!