By Enid Spitz, Staff Writer -- spitz13@up.edu
This weekend, if you noticed a lack of e-mails when logging on to your UP account, your popularity might not have been the issue. The PilotsUP e-mail server, powered by Google Mail, encountered difficulties. The problem affected e-mail, causing noticeable delays and leaving messages unreceived.
"The University is currently experiencing an outage affecting student e-mail. Students are not able to send or receive e-mail using their University account. Update: 9:32 a.m. Oct. 4: The Gmail outage has been resolved," an announcement on PilotsUP said.
"I wasn't really expecting anything very important," junior Alissa Tseu said, "so I didn't notice it too much."
For some students though, the shortage inhibited communication and schoolwork.
"I was working with a group and we didn't get each other's e-mails, so it was hard to coordinate our project and we had to throw it together last minute," sophomore Hannah Fink said.
"There was a propagation issue," Kevork Isikbay of the UP Office of Technical Support said.
For those less technically inclined, he explained it in simpler terms.
"It was kind of like a traffic jam. A few barriers in the system prevented e-mails from going through," Isikbay said. "On Monday when we came in, we took a look, identified the issues and fixed it."
The problem was quickly remedied and caused no lasting issues with the Pilots e-mail system.
"This is the first time this has happened," Isikbay said.
The Office of Technical Support does not foresee similar problems any time soon.
