[CQ-Contest] Thoughts from a sponsor on one hour log deadlines

[Marty Durham]

All true...but how many ham's do NOT have more than one e-mail account? I'm
willing to bet most everyone has hotmail, yahoo, or gmail as well as a more
'standard' ISP.

And in all the years that I've been using e-mail (pushing 20 now) I can't
recall but one or two instances in the 'early' days of a prolonged
outage...oh, and when the cable provider was offline for 3 weeks after
Hurricane Ivan rolled through Pensacola...but I had DSL too...and it was
back online as soon as the power was up.

Where there is a will there is a way...

Marty,
W1MD

-----Original Message-----
From: cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:cq-contest-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of David Kopacz
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 5:18 PM
To: cq-contest reflector
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] Thoughts from a sponsor on one hour log deadlines

Here are some additional facts to support your position, particularly
#4:

Mail Servers:

Mail servers are not always up and running. There could be emergency
maintenance being performed for a hardware failure, software failure,
backed up queue, broken connection, mis-configuration. The list is
endless. 

Some domains do not have a secondary MX (Mail Exchange) records needed
to route email to a secondary mail server when the primary mail server
is busy or down altogether. Some providers don't have secondary mail
servers.

Recipient mail servers are under no obligation to accept ANY email. Most
employ the use of DNS blacklists, RegEx filters, Tarpits and other
gadgets in order to reduce SPAM. These filtering techniques are not
perfect and often catch legitimate email. It doesn't take much to get on
some blacklists. For example, my hosting company has had servers
blacklisted for only one or two emails being delivered to a single spam
trap (email address set up only for the purpose of getting on spammers
lists)

Mail servers use queues. If a recipient email server is unavailable, the
email may be stored on the outbound mail queue for hours, sometimes
days, and even deleted after several failed delivery attempts. Each mail
server is configured according to what the administrator (operator)
chooses. A delivered email may be stuck in a recipient server queue
also.

Mail queues are often full from SPAM, slowing delivery of legitimate
mail. Outbound mail servers that permit SPAM may be blacklisted, even
temporarily, preventing the delivery of your email altogether.

Most mail servers have attachment size limits or attachment filtering.
Fortunately, our logs are typical small text files, but an aggressive
virus scanner on a mail server may block your attachment before it
leaves your server.

If the idea of placing a shorter deadline on logs submission is to speed
the scoring process, then set the deadline at a week or two, thus
providing ample time for people to return from their expeditions.

If it is to prevent cheating, the God help us all.

David ~ KY1V

PS: The 12Km WiFi Service from Montego Bay to 6Y1V is as unreliable as
the current solar cycle, perhaps more. We're lucky to have any Internet
access at all.


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