A Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet Australia Friday that a software bug discovered in a recent upgrade had been repaired on Thursday. However disgruntled customers have contacted ZDNet Australia over the last few days claiming they were still experiencing delays of several hours or more.
This morning a Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet Australia the problem had been fixed and test e-mails sent by Telstra were being delivered on time, but "residual" issues from the bug were causing continued delays. Telstra also claims to have experienced an "unexplained 20 percent surge in traffic on the network".
Other ISPs also experienced delays in delivering e-mails to their customers last week. OzEmail OzEmail ascribed the problem to "a DOS attack on the SMTP server" and said it was likely to have affected all customers nationwide. An Optus spokesperson told ZDNet Australia the ISP had "an enormous amount of spam coming into our system", and Optus wasn't sure why it had happened and hadn't yet found a pattern to the influx.
In the Telstra case, the message on the BigPond status page has remained unchanged, and many customers claim they saw no improvement in e-mail performance after the time Telstra claimed to have fixed the bug.
"Telstra's e-mail problem -- this has not been fixed like your report says. The problems are still occurring," read one e-mail that arrived on Friday afternoon.
"I am sick and tired of Telstra's dishonesty regarding their e-mail problem," wrote another BigPond customer. "I have been speaking to their support team every day since their system fell over, and each time I was given a different spin on the problem. None of the support team had any real idea of what was happening."
A number of Telstra customers have been experiencing delays in receiving e-mail of several hours, sometimes extending into several days.
"Don't listen to everything Telstra are telling you about how they have fixed their e-mail problem," wrote another BigPond customer. "It's now Saturday evening and I am still waiting for e-mails to arrive which were sent to me on Friday morning. How do I know? Because I sent them!!"
"I can send mail out and that gets to its destination very quickly. But if I sent mail to myself I either have not received them yet or some is taking 6-12 hours to be delivered and then in two instances it was delivered twice."
Once a jolly Aussie, signed up to ADSL
under the coercement, of an advertising spree
And he surfed on his modem
as he waited for his sync to light
You'll come a waltzing matilda with me....
Chorus
Waltzing Matilda,
my broadbands a killer,
we'll tax your downloads, screw your email for free,
Ziggy laughed and rejoiced as he jumped into the Big Pond
you'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me!
Chorus
Verse
Down came the 3 gig cap, while he surfed up Kazaa
Up jumped the Aussie with his excess bill u see
And he cried and he moaned, as he morgated his very own home
You'll come a Walzing Matilda with me...
Chorus
Verse
Up rode the Ziggy mounted on his Directorship
Up rode the Minister, Not like-ly!!!
"Who needs broadband, when it's only games and porn!" they said
You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me....
Chorus
Verse
Up jumped the Aussie and churned from Big Pond
"You'll never con me again!!" he said with glee
And his MP3's may be heard, as you past by Big ol' Pond
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me....
Chorus