New Processor to Speed Up E-Mail

In a move which will speed up electronic mail delivery at the College, the Harvard arts and Sciences Computer Services (HASCS) installed a new central Processor over the weekend.

The machine, a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)-Alpha, will handle all e-mail service, while the old machine it replaced will handle only on-line newsgroups, or electronic bulletin boards. the DEC-Alpha is three times as powerful as its predecessor, according to Michael G. Burner, a systems manager for HASCS.

"By separating the news and mail [services and placing them] on two different machines, we have eliminated the contention between them for disk access," Burner said.

Student computer users, who have complained recently of slow e-mail delivery, applauded the change.

"This new machine is very fast and huge. It's a very good station," said Jeff C. Tarr '96, co-founder of the student technology group Digitas. "It's a great step in advancing HASCS's computer resources and it will be tremendous help for everyone."

Tarr said dedicating one computer server to e-mail and another to newsgroups will dramatically cut delivery time for e-mail.

"Lately mail has been very backlogged with delays up to 48 to 72 hours, which is just unacceptable in a world where-email is lost if it arrives more than five minutes later," Tarr said.

Eugene E. Kim '96, the president of the Harvard Computer Society, said the new set-up will "prevent the mail backlog that's been plaguing HASCS for the last three to four months."

"Mails is now more or less instantaneous, and mail is faster," Kim said.

And James S. Gwertzman '95, the student representative to the Faculty's information technology committee, said more changes are in store for e-mail delivery.

Gwertzman said the new machine is only a "stop-gap measure" and that this summer, HASCS plans to "redesign its system from the bottom up."

The new machine also has the capacity to receive and deliver twice as much mail as the old model, according to a post made by Burner last weekend to the "harvard.general" newsgroup.

In addition, HASCS staff have moved Computer Science 51 course directories to a new disk. Staffers hope the move will free up even more disk space for student users.

"We simply needed to increase the amount of disk space available to the courses," Burner said. "We were running out of disk space in the course directories."

Last weekend's disk switch forced HASCS to suspend e-mail services for four hours and to make course directories unavailabe for about two hours.

In his message to the "harverd.general"newsgroup, Burner apologized for shutting downvarious services during the installation of thenew machine.

"Our mail load exceeded our mail capacity, andwe were very backed up," Burner said in aninterview. "Mail was not being delivered in atimely fashion."

But the new processor should change that,Burner said

In his message to the "harverd.general"newsgroup, Burner apologized for shutting downvarious services during the installation of thenew machine.

"Our mail load exceeded our mail capacity, andwe were very backed up," Burner said in aninterview. "Mail was not being delivered in atimely fashion."

But the new processor should change that,Burner said