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Webmail is very slow this morning

Anotherone
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Not just Plusnet webmail that's a bit sluggish, a few other things as well, web pages taking ages now and again.
kmilburn
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Webmail (for me at least) is very slow this morning,  anything to do with the problem affecting the outbound email?
colintivy
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Join the club!  Waiting for Webmail is related to watching paint dry today. Lost a multiple Fwd yesterday.
Angry
Dancer2
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Quote from: kmilburn
Webmail (for me at least) is very slow this morning,   anything to do with the problem affecting the outbound email?

I have been having problems for a few days now...my sessions have been cancelled or expired, every few minutes..So Annoying. Sad
drj
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

RC webmail was fine this morning, fine at lunchtime, but I'm afraid it's dreadful this evening - very slow if it responds at all, and I'm getting thrown off with the "expired/invalid" message.
Peter_Vaughan
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Webmail has been bad for me all afternoon with slow downloading / refreshing and very frequent session invalid/timeouts. Tonight I can't stay logged in for more than a few minutes making webmail unusable.
AlaricAdair
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Has PlusNet seen the server management tools from Xangati.com? Designed for cloud use.
Now Zen, but a +Net residue.
drj
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

For info seems to be back to normal this morning.
Peter_Vaughan
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Not for me... still frequent invalid sessions / logouts. This is on several systems so not a problem on my side.
colintivy
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Was OK earlier but down the drain again now.
bobpullen
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

There's the odd mail collection server coming under heavy load occasionally which is probably a product of the data centre migration we're in the middle of. It's a pain I know but should hopefully be relatively short-lived.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

Capvermell
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Quote from: Bob
There's the odd mail collection server coming under heavy load occasionally which is probably a product of the data centre migration we're in the middle of. It's a pain I know but should hopefully be relatively short-lived.

Bob,
Please don't patronise us by trying to pretend you only have minor problems at Plusnet with your webmail servers and/or Roundcube's ability to interact satisfactorily with them when the current problems are absolutely massive, nearly terminal and are continuing to get worse week by week.
Since February I have been using Roundcube as my main and only way to write emails and also read and retrieve them.  I meant to go back to using Thunderbird on my new laptop (my old one died along with the Thunderbird email client installation on it) but so far haven't done so because at one stage I was intending to using Thunderbird on my new laptop but of course in this Ipad and smartphone type age it is actually more convenient to have all your email on webmail even though webmail in general and Roundcube in particular is less stable and less flexible than a Pop/SMTP type solution on one PC like Thunderbird.  And of course third rate Roundcube appears to still have no smartphone App either at all or especially for Android phones. Angry
May be its because I now have 3,000 or so messages in my webmail Inbox but at any busy period I'm finding Roundcube taking a minute to two minutes to log in and show me all the messages on the first page of my Inbox.  Also I have had a persistent problem ever since you went to Roundcube that at busy periods when your servers are under load I can be randomly suddenly logged out of Roundcube in the middle of composing a new email and sometimes I can press the Back button to get back to a version of my email to the last letter was writing but sometimes I can't and the browser refuses to let me go back.  Either way at that stage I won't be able to send that email but will have to Copy what I was writing from the screen I have gone Back to in to Notepad and then log back in to webmail and paste it in there from Notepad.  Needless to say with an email with multiple recipients etc this is not at all convenient.  Also your servers are sufficiently flaky that if I can't use the Back button to get back to what I was writing my next hope is the Drafts folder but sometimes I find this has a saved very recent version of what I was writing and other times it hasn't saved anything at all if it was a newish email I was composing.
In short the service you are delivering for webmail at Plusnet is third rate and extremely poor compared to obvious competitor products like Yahoo, Gmail or MSN and GMX  You and your colleagues need to stop being so complacent about it and face reality and do something about it to resolve the situation.  Of course I suspect most of you who work at Plusnet don't use Plusnet as your main email provider for personal use and hence this may be why most of you staff members are unaware of just how bad things really are for those of us foolish enough to rely on Plusnet for our main email accounts, especially if we are mad enough to also think that Plusnet is capable of competently supporting a webmail interface.
bobpullen
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Quote from: Capvermell
Quote from: Bob
There's the odd mail collection server coming under heavy load occasionally which is probably a product of the data centre migration we're in the middle of. It's a pain I know but should hopefully be relatively short-lived.

Bob,
Please don't patronise us by trying to pretend you only have minor problems at Plusnet with your webmail servers and/or Roundcube's ability to interact satisfactorily with them when the current problems are absolutely massive, nearly terminal and are continuing to get worse week by week.

I'm not trying to patronise anybody and I'm not pretending anything. Neither am I talking specifically about our Webmail servers or Roundcube's ability to serve as an adequate software solution.
We have two data centres in Sheffield across which pretty much everything other than broadband connectivity, DNS and the CGI platform is hosted i.e. email, web hosting, our website servers, our internal systems and databases to name but a few. Our engineers are physically moving <b>*all*</b> of the equipment from one datacentre to another. This is a massive job and at the moment it's the turn of the email platform. The outbound delivery servers were moved earlier this week, the mailhosts this week (these are virtual servers that make up part of the mail platform), the inbound delivery servers have already been moved and there will be more to move next week. Whilst this happens there will be hiccups.
Quote from: Capvermell
Since February I have been using Roundcube as my main and only way to write emails and also read and retrieve them.  I meant to go back to using Thunderbird on my new laptop (my old one died along with the Thunderbird email client installation on it) but so far haven't done so because at one stage I was intending to using Thunderbird on my new laptop but of course in this Ipad and smartphone type age it is actually more convenient to have all your email on webmail even though webmail in general and Roundcube in particular is less stable and less flexible than a Pop/SMTP type solution on one PC like Thunderbird.  And of course third rate Roundcube appears to still have no smartphone App either at all or especially for Android phones. Angry

I would suggest you investigate using IMAP as a solution as that would be far more suitable based on what you're saying here.
Quote from: Capvermell
May be its because I now have 3,000 or so messages in my webmail Inbox but at any busy period I'm finding Roundcube taking a minute to two minutes to log in and show me all the messages on the first page of my Inbox.  Also I have had a persistent problem ever since you went to Roundcube that at busy periods when your servers are under load I can be randomly suddenly logged out of Roundcube in the middle of composing a new email and sometimes I can press the Back button to get back to a version of my email to the last letter was writing but sometimes I can't and the browser refuses to let me go back.  Either way at that stage I won't be able to send that email but will have to Copy what I was writing from the screen I have gone Back to in to Notepad and then log back in to webmail and paste it in there from Notepad.  Needless to say with an email with multiple recipients etc this is not at all convenient.  Also your servers are sufficiently flaky that if I can't use the Back button to get back to what I was writing my next hope is the Drafts folder but sometimes I find this has a saved very recent version of what I was writing and other times it hasn't saved anything at all if it was a newish email I was composing.

The login prompts suggest load on one or more of our mail collection servers rather than a problem with the Webmail servers themselves or Roundcube (which I still maintain is more than adequate a software solution). Either way, things aren't going to be plain sailing until the data centre work is complete.
Quote from: Capvermell
In short the service you are delivering for webmail at Plusnet is third rate and extremely poor compared to obvious competitor products like Yahoo, Gmail or MSN and GMX  You and your colleagues need to stop being so complacent about it and face reality and do something about it to resolve the situation.  Of course I suspect most of you who work at Plusnet don't use Plusnet as your main email provider for personal use and hence this may be why most of you staff members are unaware of just how bad things really are for those of us foolish enough to rely on Plusnet for our main email accounts, especially if we are mad enough to also think that Plusnet is capable of competently supporting a webmail interface.

The providers you mention are able to fund their mail platforms via advertising and other revenue. By comparison we have significantly little to invest in the mail platform. Don't get me wrong, we're not going to leave the platform to die a death, but neither would I ever expect the uptime you can expect from one of the aforementioned players.
Those who I've spoke to about Webmail performance before will know that it's never really been 'cross site' the same way the rest of the email platform is e.g. collection/delivery servers. I also mentioned that we would eventually be doing this at which point things should improve. This data centre migration is the work I was referring to.
Once we're over the hill things should hopefully have been worth the short-term pain. Until then I can only ask for people's patience.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

Capvermell
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Grrrghhhhh!  I just got forcibly logged off in the middle of composing an email I had been writing for half an hour or so and the Back button didn't work to take me back to what I had just been writing although now logged out.  When I tried to log back in to the Webmail interface I then got a SERVICE CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE! Error No. [500] message. Shocked Angry Cry
Quote from: Bob

I would suggest you investigate using IMAP as a solution as that would be far more suitable based on what you're saying here.

I thought IMAP was a mail delivery transport system (a modern alternative to SMTP and Pop) that various webmail clients like Roundcube or Gmail in particular use.  So by using Roundcube in what way precisely am I not using IMAP already?
Quote
The login prompts suggest load on one or more of our mail collection servers rather than a problem with the Webmail servers themselves or Roundcube (which I still maintain is more than adequate a software solution). Either way, things aren't going to be plain sailing until the data centre work is complete

And if this excess load occurs why isn't the result of the excess load situation consistent?  i.e. why can I sometimes press Back to get back to the screen I was composing my message in to the exact last character I have written (this is what happens the majority of the time that one is forcibly logged out of composing an email) but why other times when I press Back do I stay stuck at the Login screen and am forced to then rely on Drafts which only sometimes seems to have a recent copy of what I was writing.  EIther way being logged out of an email you are in the middle of composing is a reason to very rapidly lose confidence in Plusnet Webmail as a safe and secure environment to compose emails in.
Quote
The providers you mention are able to fund their mail platforms via advertising and other revenue. By comparison we have significantly little to invest in the mail platform. Don't get me wrong, we're not going to leave the platform to die a death, but neither would I ever expect the uptime you can expect from one of the aforementioned players.

So are we really saying that BT group's position is that its Plusnet (AKA cut price BT in Disguise of Yorkshire) brand is too cheap a product for customers to expect to have a reliable or stable webmail interface and that BT think customers need to pay for its full flavour BT ISP brand in order to have access to the more reliable Yahoo webmail platform?
Also are we saying there is a maximum number of items stored in an individual Plusnet Mailbox that your servers can be expected to support either reliably, quickly or in a stable fashion?  Or is this instead a limitation of Roundcube's software interface if you have a large number of emails stored in your Inbox?
bobpullen
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Re: Webmail is very slow this morning

Quote from: Capvermell
Grrrghhhhh!  I just got forcibly logged off in the middle of composing an email I had been writing for half an hour or so and the Back button didn't work to take me back to what I had just been writing although now logged out.  When I tried to log back in to the Webmail interface I then got a SERVICE CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE! Error No. [500] message. Shocked Angry Cry
Quote from: Bob

I would suggest you investigate using IMAP as a solution as that would be far more suitable based on what you're saying here.

I thought IMAP was a mail delivery transport system (a modern alternative to SMTP and Pop) that various webmail clients like Roundcube or Gmail in particular use.  So by using Roundcube in what way precisely am I not using IMAP already?

You are, but by using IMAP via a standalone client on all of your various devices (something you could do from your smartphone) then you take the Webmail servers and the way they communicate with the mail collection servers out of the equation. Whilst people are grumbling about Webmail at the moment, nobody is grumbling about vanilla IMAP access from an email client. It's a suggestion, and one that would probably save you a lot of pain, at least in the short term.
Quote from: Capvermell
Quote
The login prompts suggest load on one or more of our mail collection servers rather than a problem with the Webmail servers themselves or Roundcube (which I still maintain is more than adequate a software solution). Either way, things aren't going to be plain sailing until the data centre work is complete

And if this excess load occurs why isn't the result of the excess load situation consistent?  i.e. why can I sometimes press Back to get back to the screen I was composing my message in to the exact last character I have written (this is what happens the majority of the time that one is forcibly logged out of composing an email) but why other times when I press Back do I stay stuck at the Login screen and am forced to then rely on Drafts which only sometimes seems to have a recent copy of what I was writing.  EIther way being logged out of an email you are in the middle of composing is a reason to very rapidly lose confidence in Plusnet Webmail as a safe and secure environment to compose emails in.

By nature load isn't consistent. There are peaks and troughs, and where one server in the cluster may be under load, another may not. There's also the load balancing equipment to consider. There's a lot of kit that makes up the mail platform and various problems are due to various things.
Quote
The providers you mention are able to fund their mail platforms via advertising and other revenue. By comparison we have significantly little to invest in the mail platform. Don't get me wrong, we're not going to leave the platform to die a death, but neither would I ever expect the uptime you can expect from one of the aforementioned players.

Quote from: Capvermell
So are we really saying that BT group's position is that its Plusnet (AKA cut price BT in Disguise of Yorkshire) brand is too cheap a product for customers to expect to have a reliable or stable webmail interface and that BT think customers need to pay for its full flavour BT ISP brand in order to have access to the more reliable Yahoo webmail platform?

No.
Quote from: Capvermell
Also are we saying there is a maximum number of items stored in an individual Plusnet Mailbox that your servers can be expected to support either reliably, quickly or in a stable fashion?  Or is this instead a limitation of Roundcube's software interface if you have a large number of emails stored in your Inbox?

No, but it may be the case at the moment. Roundcube is more than capable of rendering this volume of mail. I have access to a third party Roundcube install that has nigh on 7,000 emails in the Inbox totalling almost 1GB. The message list displays in a matter of seconds when I first log in.
I'm not here to argue, I'm here to explain that there may well be problems at the moment, ask people to be patient, and advise that things should hopefully be a lot better than month's past once we've got all the data centre migration/cross-site setup sorted out.
Still interested on feedback about the times things are ropey mind you. It's from posts here/on Twitter and noise from the folk in the support centre that we've been able to quickly identify some of the problems we've encountered this week.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵