Duke internal e-mails bounced with no warning

March 13, 2008

Duke e-mail delivery was interrupted from 4:50 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 12, bouncing 61,000 inbound messages, including 2,500 sent within Duke that affected 1,200 users.

Because Duke-to-Duke senders received no indication of delivery failure, the Office of Information Technology Service Desk will contact each of these users individually today to alert them. Copies of Duke internal messages can be recovered from “sent mail” and resent. (E-mail senders from outside Duke received bounce-back notices. Duke e-mail sent to outsiders was unaffected.)

The delivery interruption was caused by an error introduced during maintenance of the Duke domain name server (DNS). Other departmental mail systems may also have been affected. OIT is working to improve its procedures to ensure effective, uninterrupted e-mail delivery.