Webmail Delays Fixed by Recent Upgrades

Several small upgrades to Harvard’s webmail service recently fixed slowdowns reported by students last month, according to Coordinator of Residential Computing Kevin S. Davis ’98.

Since the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) designed a new interface for the site at the beginning of the school year, students have complained about delays when using the site.

Davis said recent changes to the way in which the site handles user login and authentication have fixed the problem.

“We made some changes at the end of September that we believe has made it faster,” said Davis, who is also a Crimson editor. “We did notice from feedback we were getting that the service has been quicker recently, and we haven’t heard any complaints from folks in the month of October.”

HASCS decided earlier this year to upgrade to a new mail application that allowed full integration with the my.harvard online portal and more advanced search capabilities.

Davis said that the September slowdown was due to an increase in traffic as a result of the application’s integration with the my.harvard portal, and to the complexities of some of the new features.

The HASCS has also ordered new Compaq servers as part of their ongoing webmail infrastructure upgrades.

Many members of the Harvard community complained about the slowdowns during the month of September, and some said they noticed a difference in service as a result of the recent upgrades.

“It’s actually not that bad anymore,” said Kunal K. Agarwal ’08. “It definitely has improved a bit. What was bad in September was composing e-mails. The service was slightly delayed, and, as a result, I’d end up accidentally clicking the ‘send’ button multiple times and sending several copies of the same e-mail.”

Graduate student Jeremy A. Greene said that the webmail application is still slower than it was in previous years, but that it has improved since September.

According to Davis, the slowdowns were mainly experienced by users of the web-based mail service, although users of programs such as Outlook and Eudora did encounter brief unrelated problems last month that HASCS resolved by making adjustments to their servers.

Some users of the web-based application, however, said they didn’t notice any glitches in the service.

“The webmail service is usually pretty good,” said Laura A. Schoenherr ’08. “I think that there have been fewer glitches recently.”

According to Davis, the new webmail program is an open source project, meaning that programmers from around the world contributed to the code of the application.

“We’ve been very happy with the webmail application,” said Davis. “We feel like we’re on a good path with it and are looking forward to future improvements.”