By Lori Bredemeyer, Staff Writer

Students, faculty and administrators experienced e-mail problems last week because of a corrupted message resulting in an overload in the system.

The problem occurred March 26 and lasted about three days when the server was attempting to deliver the corrupted e-mail, said Bob Nevill, director of computer and network services.

Normally there are about 5,000 to 10,000 messages in the queue, which is the storage place for e-mails, in which the first message to come in is the first to go out.

The messages are not in the queue for long, but when the corrupted message was in there, it could not be sent and e-mails began to build up.

By the time computer and network services discovered the problem, about 38,000 messages were built up in the queue.

Nevill said the service shut down, meaning the ability to send and receive e-mails at that time was discontinued.

The team first made sure the system was not experiencing an Internet attack or a virus, and then they went to work ensuring nothing else was corrupted so that e-mails were not sent to the wrong addresses, Nevill said.

Although a message concerning the problem was sent out via voicemail and announcements on myACU, several students and faculty called Team 55, including Melinda Dixon, junior psychology major from Austin.

“They told me when they fixed the problem, our problem would be fixed,” Dixon said. “It wasn’t really an inconvenience, it was just annoying.”

Nevill said when e-mail services are down, it’s frustrating for everyone on campus.

“E-mail is probably the single most critical system we have,” Nevill said. “It’s a feeling of disconnectedness.”

Doug Duncan, sophomore integrated marketing communication major from Boerne, said his only problem came when he tried to send an e-mail to his girlfriend, whom he called instead.

“I figured the server would just come back up, as many times as our Internet is down,” Duncan said.