Service down

[Trogdor]

I'm open to the idea that maybe Fastmail isn't as in touch with customers as it used to be. But if you want ad-free, standards-based email, who would you move on to next? Honest question, since I've been with Fastmail so long I haven't researched the competition lately.

I'm not saying Fastmail shouldn't try to do better, they should. But I have a feeling that we're still a long way from being able to make a case for abandoning Fastmail unless there is a clearly superior alternative.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by Trogdor

I'm open to the idea that maybe Fastmail isn't as in touch with customers as it used to be. But if you want ad-free, standards-based email, who would you move on to next? Honest question, since I've been with Fastmail so long I haven't researched the competition lately.

I'm not saying Fastmail shouldn't try to do better, they should. But I have a feeling that we're still a long way from being able to make a case for abandoning Fastmail unless there is a clearly superior alternative.

Fastmail remains a good option, overall, especially at the price.

If willing to pay more, and looking for a superior customer service experience, LuxSci is one option to look at.

[mballas]

It escapes me why there is so much talk about leaving Fastmail after a 90 minute outage that seems not to have been a failure of Fastmail at all. If the Level 3 relationship is a bad one, then maybe they will have to investigate changing that relationship. But all this talk of jumping ship seems like a bizarre overreaction. I am proud to be a subscriber of Fastmail, mindful of the good work all of them have done in the last few years adding Caldav, Carddav and Notes, while maintaining a reliable mail service.

[BritTim]

Originally Posted by mballas

It escapes me why there is so much talk about leaving Fastmail after a 90 minute outage that seems not to have been a failure of Fastmail at all. If the Level 3 relationship is a bad one, then maybe they will have to investigate changing that relationship. But all this talk of jumping ship seems like a bizarre overreaction. I am proud to be a subscriber of Fastmail, mindful of the good work all of them have done in the last few years adding Caldav, Carddav and Notes, while maintaining a reliable mail service.

I am not recommending jumping ship. All services have strengths and weaknesses. Fastmail remains a reasonable overall proposition. That will not stop me from pointing out weaknesses as I see them (which have nothing to do with whether a single outage occurred or not).

By the way, I am not so quick to give them credit for finally providing a Contacts sync capability (even if well implemented) five years later than most of their competitors.

[William9]

BritTim, I think your comments are thoughtful and reasonable.

[David]

My thoughts (these last few weeks) are that these forums are getting a little old (and tired) Fastmail's success, combined with the small percentage of its userbase who actually use these forums, are perhaps causing Fastmail 'company' to re-evaluate their usefulness.

Hopefully I am wrong.........

[mballas]

Rob N who has been the most frequent FM representative poster in the last 2-3 years has been a less frequent poster this year. He has put in many hours on the recent projects and I can personally attest to his enthusiasm in helping with some problems in the implementation of the iOS app. I can only speculate that his recent absence from this forum might be a reaction to the less than diplomatic criticisms offered by some forum members.

[Terry]

Most of Australia had an internet outage, so this may have caused problems for Fastmail.

[Berenburger]

Originally Posted by Terry

Most of Australia had an internet outage, so this may have caused problems for Fastmail.

This happened in the New York datacenter.

[horatio8]

Originally Posted by David

My thoughts (these last few weeks) are that these forums are getting a little old (and tired) Fastmail's success, combined with the small percentage of its userbase who actually use these forums, are perhaps causing Fastmail 'company' to re-evaluate their usefulness.

Hopefully I am wrong.........

I think that Fastmail reps still respond here often. I think a world where first response is Twitter and other social media, and more in-depth conversations happen in the forum is the way forward. I don't think that means they are trying to phase out forum attention.

That is my hope at least, as I've gotten invaluable help on many occasions from Bill (n5bb) and others here in the forum. Where else would I go for that? My whole email workflow is based on Bill's advice.

[David]

Originally Posted by horatio8

That is my hope at least, as I've gotten invaluable help on many occasions from Bill (n5bb) and others here in the forum. Where else would I go for that? My whole email workflow is based on Bill's advice.

Mine too. For sure.

[Terry]

Originally Posted by Berenburger

This happened in the New York datacenter.

Surly there has to be an Aussie link to NYC?

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by Terry

Surly there has to be an Aussie link to NYC?

I'm not sure what you mean by that question. Fastmail is an Australian company with nearly all employees in Australia, but their main datacenter (where the primary web, IMAP, and SMTP servers are located) is at the NYI Datacenter in NYC. An additional datacenter in Los Angeles California (US) is being set up, and backup SMTP receiving MX server services are also available at a datacenter in Amsterdam (Europe) so that incoming mail can be queued if the NYC datacenter is offline.

The system managers at Fastmail can communicate with the datacenter in NYC via the Internet and telephone. The problem on 6 Feb 2016 was that the main Internet connection between the Fastmail servers at NYI and the Level 3 Internet backbone failed. That connection was set up in a certain fashion (due to DDOS attacks back in November of last year) which made it hard to fix the problem quickly. You can read about the details yourself at:
https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/02/12...etwork-outage/

Bill

[Terry]

Yes i realise that the servers are in the US, but if Fastmail has no internet how can they talk to the servers? surly sorting things out on the phone would be very difficult especially due to the time factor as we are a few hours ahead of the US....or do they have people in there 24 X 7

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by Terry

Yes i realise that the servers are in the US, but if Fastmail has no internet how can they talk to the servers? surly sorting things out on the phone would be very difficult especially due to the time factor as we are a few hours ahead of the US....or do they have people in there 24 X 7

Yes, there is 24x7 support at both FastMail and NYI Datacenter. The Internet connection which failed was the main customer-facing connection protected against DDOS.

Bill