EZ-NetTools Customer Support

Call Us: 800-627-4780

Status of EZ-Online Mail
During January 2003, the hardware used for EZ-Online mail was substantially upgraded. Ironically, even though we increased the number of computers processing the mail by four fold, the response time decreased. Below, we'll discuss briefly why we are having the problem, some things you can do to help, and finally, what we are doing to solve the problem.

Some history
During our testing of the new hardware, this problem did not manifest itself. Only under the full load of all e-mail clients did the problem become apparent. We cannot go back to the old hardware architecture, because it was straining under the processing load, but it was not visible to you, the end user. The nature of the problem is very technical and an inherent property of the mail processing software called POP [post office protocol]. POP is very standard and common, albeit a very old e-mail protocol.
The problems we are experiencing now are directly related to the number and amount of messages that are stored in an e-mail account. The recent, dramatic increase in e-mail messages is overwhelming our system. Most of you may have noticed a sharp rise in junk e-mail in recent months. Because of a "quirk" with the e-mail software, many of these messages are duplicates of messages that have already been read. One thing you can do to help alleviate the problem is to remove your e-mails from the server once you have read them. There are also several other ways to help that will be explained later.

What we are doing to solve the problem.
To solve this problem, we are doing three things. We will be working on all three of these tasks simultaneously:
  • We are redesigning our hardware architecture. This change will occur in several carefully implemented steps.
  • We will work with you to remove dead e-mail messages. If you have a large number of messages, we should be contacting you shortly.
  • We will change the web based e-mail software currently known as EZ-Online Mail to a new and more efficient protocol and client (for the technically savvy, we will be moving from POP to an IMAP protocol). Within several weeks we hope to have this step completed. A beta version is currently functional and ready to be tested on. For those of you who are currently experiencing severe problems with web-based e-mail, we suggest that you assist us in the beta testing of this mail client. If you are interested, read the section below on getting into the beta testing program.

What you can do to help
The first and best solution is to use an e-mail client program run from your Personal computer, like Outlook Express or Netscape Messenger. In this case, you should use the default advanced option of removing e-mail from the server. In other words, you should NOT select the option of leaving a copy of your messages on the server. As a result, your account on the EZ-NetTools mail servers will not have duplicate messages and will remain lean and efficient. If you have any questions on how to set this up, please contact Customer Support.
Second, if you are using our web-based e-mail client, EZ-Online Mail, you must change your configuration to remove message from the server. Once you are logged in to EZ-Online Mail, select Options from the sidebar. When you are at the options page, select "Remove from server." By doing this, the messages will not be duplicated in your mailbox, and the mail server will work much more efficiently. NOTE: By failing to make this change to your EZ-Online Mail configuration, it is directly proportional to the current issues we are having with the mail server. Web based e-mail software like EZ-Online Mail is a very good solution for using e-mail. However, in this interim period, the problems we are experiencing become exaggerated when using this approach. We will eventually solve this problem. So, if the web-based solution works best for your situation, you will be able to continue to use it successfully.

Summary
We apologize for the problems that some of you have been experiencing with your e-mail, principally, those who retrieve your mail with EZ-Online Mail. This problem has arisen because of the tremendous increase in e-mail being processed by the system. Our recent hardware upgrade did not solve the problem as we had hoped. We are working on a multi-pronged solution. There is a very viable alternative available while we are working on a solution by joining our beta testing program.

Becoming a beta tester
As a beta tester, you would be able to access your e-mail using your browser without experiencing the delays or strange messages you may currently be experiencing with EZ-Online Mail. If you are interested in receiving more information about the beta testing program, please click here.