Road Runner Email Upgrade Page -- Why change?

Question: Why is Time Warner making these changes?

Answer: Road Runner High Speed Online Service is being updated to meet the increased demands and functionality that the Internet is placing on our system, and your software. Road Runner Manager replaces the Netmanage login client and adds new functionality. The Netmanage software we currently deploy no longer meets these needs for several reasons:
1. The client software takes up 10+ MB of hard disk space with applications that the majority of customers never use. If they are used, there are free versions of these programs that are better.
2. Our help desk, which supports Road Runner nationally, currently specializes in the Road Runner / Microsoft client software. Northeast Ohio is the only Road Runner system that still installs the older Netmanage client software.
3. Netmanage no longer supports the version of client software we use. Newer versions of Netmanage will require a new license and key code. Time Warner has decided to partner with Microsoft as the client of choice. If you wish to update your Netmanage client software, it is possible to order the latest version by contacting Netmanage directly. The Microsoft client software will be provided for free, by Time Warner, from a high speed FTP site.
4. The Kerberos security code that is integrated into the Netmanage client software was one of the major causes of problems with the quality of service Road Runner provides. As some of you are aware, every morning at 3:00 am, the system shuts down for 10 - 15 minutes while the Kerberos tickets and login server resynchronize. Our new Road Runner Manager server software which is not based on Kerberos, does not need this shutdown. The old email server used Kerberos to authenticate you before sending email to your PC. During peak hours, the Kerberos software could not keep up with the load, and the KPOP server (the program that sends email to you) disconnected before downloading all of the email saved on the server. Eliminating KPOP and replacing it with a slimmer POP3 server substantially increased mail performance.
5. The KPOP server code also negatively impacted the news server (INND) running on the same machine. KPOP is a very heavy (ab)user of the disk arrays we use on our servers. During peak loads on the system, the news server cannot get enough access to these disks, so it shuts down (throttles) until the system load decreases. This prevents the news service from receiving all of the messages offered to us in a timely manner. Our new news server, based on a Sun Enterprise 250, running Typhoon news server corrects this problem.
6. The Netmanage client software does not support all of the operating systems that are popular with our customers. Specifically, Linux users are forced to use a client program that was written by a programmer who reverse engineered Netmanage's protocol. Although the program appears to work (for the customer), it negatively impacts our server software because it doesn't behave as it should. This floods our management system with error messages, making it difficult to debug problems. A PERL based RRM login client is available from our software site.
7. The current login client will log off Macintosh users after seven minutes, if they are running programs that take over all of the Mac's resources. Programs like Quake take over so many resources, that our login client can't send keep alive packets back to our server. Our server erroneously assume that the Mac was turned off, and logs out the user. Our new login manager works around this problem by allowing Mac users to disable keep alive polling.
8. We have outgrown our computing resources! This is a great position to be in. We have recently purchased several new servers and are completing the configuration. These new servers will divide the work currently being shared by the existing servers.
  We have a new server specifically allocated for email. The new email server, Post.Office, allows us to host multiple domains (neo.rr.com in addition to neo.lrun.com!), filter that annoying unsolicited email (SPAM) from known abusers, block mail relaying (a technique SPAMMERS use to hide their identities), and fix some of the bugs that cause mailboxes to get locked up.
  A very large server, with HighWind's Typhoon software, will replace our existing news server. This server is successfully operating in a number of other Road Runner areas with six times the number of articles being received! We will be peering with several different news providers to increase the reliability of our news feed.
  We are also adding some additional web servers to support the increased demand we see for products like Web Based Training, secured transactions for eCommerce, and web hosting services.
9. Prepare for our new content format! All of our Road Runner content is being updated to really take advantage of the technology in use on the Internet. This will really be broadband content, showing off the capabilities of your PC and our system. Our new content format is still being tested.
10. Increased the number of IP addresses available for dynamic use. We have a large block of IP addresses assigned to our system which are now in use. This was made possible by updating our router and modem software.

This page was last updated: Friday, November 20, 1998 04:08 PM