Two Federal Burearu of Investigation agents died during a …
Police said a 54-year-old woman ran over a man with her vehicle…
Advertisement
Cox restores email outage
Updated: Wednesday, 19 Dec 2012, 9:35 PM EST
Published : Sunday, 16 Dec 2012, 1:57 PM EST
PORTSMOTUH, Va. (WAVY) - A massive outage of Cox Communications' residential e-mail service affecting thousands of customers from the East Coast to the Midwest, including Hampton Roads has been restored.
A spokesperson from Cox Communications told WAVY.com the outage started late Friday night and included the entire Virginia service area.
Customers were not receiving incoming e-mail but were still able to send outgoing e-mail through an Outlook e-mail client or another e-mail client.
Cox isolated the cause of the outage to the e-mail system platform. They did not anticipate services will be restored Sunday, according to Cox's Director of Public Affairs for Virginia, Emma Inman.
Inman said all messages that have been sent to affected Cox e-mail accounts would be delivered once service has been restored.
The Cox business e-mail service was not affected by the outage.
Below is the 9 p.m. update Inman sent to WAVY.com Sunday:
We are continuing to make progress. The system began coming back online shortly before 6pm ET and customers in multiple Cox communities have begun to report that their email access is restored. Our messaging stores are not regionally based, so service will not turn on based on location. We expect to continue to make good progress tonight and, as teams continue to work through the night, additional Cox email customers from across our service areas should see their service restored.
As mentioned in our 3 p.m. post, all messages that have been received since Friday are queued in our system and we anticipate delivering messages to customers on a rolling basis as we bring the platform back online. Your queued emails will arrive gradually and may not be delivered in chronological order. You may continue to receive these queued emails over the course of several days after your service is restored.
Thank you for your continued patience. We will issue another update at 11 p.m. ET.
Impact of webmail outage by Residential Customer Scenario
- Customers who have and actively use a cox.net email account ( username@cox.net ).
- Customers attempting to access their cox.net email account through webmail (Classic and/or Enhanced Webmail) will not be able to access their messages and cannot send or receive email.
- Customers attempting to access their cox.net email account through an email client such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, iPhone and Android smartphones, or an iPad may be able to access messages received prior to Friday evening, however no new messages will be downloaded; they will receive an error message when attempting to retrieve new messages. When cox.net email service is restored, any queued messages will be downloaded at that time. They should be able to successfully send messages from their cox.net account.
- Customers who have and DO NOT actively use a cox.net email account ( username@cox.net ).
- While their cox.net email account is impacted as described, they will not see any direct impact, as they do not use their account.
- Customers who have an email account from a service such as Yahoo!, or Hotmail.
- These email accounts are not impacted by this issue. Only cox.net email accounts ( username@cox.net ) are impacted by this outage.
- Customers who have created a new temporary email account from a service such as Yahoo!, or Hotmail since Friday evening as a result of this outage.
- These email accounts are not impacted by this issue, however do not allow customers to gain access to their cox.net email account. Only cox.net email accounts ( username@cox.net ) are impacted by this outage.
FAQs
Q: Have all Cox High Speed Internet Customers been Impacted?
A: No, only Residential Cox High Speed Internet Customers in the East and Midwest who have and use a cox.net email address ( username@cox.net ) are impacted. Customers who use other email services such as Gmail or Yahoo! email will not see any impact to those services.
A: No, only Residential Cox High Speed Internet Customers in the East and Midwest who have and use a cox.net email address ( username@cox.net ) are impacted. Customers who use other email services such as Gmail or Yahoo! email will not see any impact to those services.
Q: If someone is trying to send an email to my cox.net account, will they get an error message?
A: No, people who send email to your cox.net email account will not receive an error message; they will not know you are unable to receive emails.
A: No, people who send email to your cox.net email account will not receive an error message; they will not know you are unable to receive emails.
Q: What will happen to the emails that are being sent to my cox.net email address during this outage period?
A: Currently, all incoming messages are queued in our system and we expect to deliver messages to customers on a rolling basis as we bring our system back online. Full message delivery may take several days.
A: Currently, all incoming messages are queued in our system and we expect to deliver messages to customers on a rolling basis as we bring our system back online. Full message delivery may take several days.
Q: If I must send an email during this outage, what options do I have?
A: If you must send or receive an email during this outage, you may want to create a temporary new email account from a service such as Yahoo!, or Hotmail. This will not allow you to gain access to your cox.net account, however you will
A: If you must send or receive an email during this outage, you may want to create a temporary new email account from a service such as Yahoo!, or Hotmail. This will not allow you to gain access to your cox.net account, however you will
be able to send and receive email while your cox.net email is inaccessible.
Here is an apology email from Cox Senior VP Paul Cronin:
Dear Cox email user,
We owe you an apology for your recent experience with our residential email service. We pride ourselves on delivering your most important connections, and candidly, we recognize that did not happen. We are focused on how we can improve your trust in our service and with our company. Our hope is that we have begun to do that with this apology and explanation.
On Friday, we experienced a storage platform failure in our production environment. Both our primary and back-up storage devices that support email service were affected. Dozens of engineers worked with our storage vendor and have isolated what caused the platform in our Midwest and East Coast regions to go down. Every resource was made available to restore services to all affected customers as soon as possible. The multiple components and processes that make up our email system required time to bring back online, and care to ensure that no messages were lost. This week, we began to replace the storage platform as part of our efforts to ensure this issue does not happen again.
We understand that email is an important component of your Cox High Speed Internet service, and we deeply regret the impact this outage had, especially at a time when you are busy preparing for holiday celebrations with your family and friends. On behalf of the 20,000 Cox employees who proudly serve our customers, I hope you’ll accept our most sincere apologies.
Sincerely,
Paul Cronin
Senior Vice President, Customer Experience
Cox Communications
Opinions that are derogatory, attack other users or are offensive in nature may be removed. WAVY is not responsible for the content posted in this comment section. We reserve the right to remove any offensive or off-topic remark or thread. To mark a comment for review by a moderator, click "Flag as inappropriate."
Email This
Print This
View Story on a Single PageAdvertisement
Photos: Local Mugshots
A photo gallery of arrest and booking photos from across the Hampton Roads area.
Advertisement