Netscape News Server and Cyclone feeds

Michael Whisenant ( mwhisen@airnet.net )
Sat, 24 Jan 1998 12:44:58 -0600

Hello,

Sorry for the intrusion if you are not running Netscape News or Collabra
Messaging server on NT. However, so many ISPs have very similar situations
on this list and indeed I have found two others on this list already that I
felt this would be necessary. It appears that a recent change in many
backbone providers (at least BBNPlanet, AT&T, and Sprint) news routers is
causing Netscape servers running on NT to fail. The common feature is the
backbone provider using Cyclone and the ISP running any version of Netscape
on Windows NT. This problem first reported incident known is around Jan
12, 1998. Sprint customers first report is around Jan 20, 1998.

The error reported is either a Dr. Watson access violation, or an innd.exe
popup Application error. Whichever the ISP receives it will ALWAYS be the
same error. Each ISP know presently has replaced memory and more hardware
as available to try and resolve the problem. I personally have replaced
every hardware item with NEW items 1 at a time to isolate the problem.
Netscape has been of no assistance, reporting that it must be a hardware
issue. Until last evening they were telling each ISP that it was isolated
to just them. Now Netscape has pointed to this common thread that if the
ISP is running Netscape on NT and your feed is from a Cyclone feed then you
may be having this problem. I am working with BBNPlanet and Cyclone to see
if they made a recent change. I have been successfully running the above
combination for 5-6 months.

Cyclone has suggested to BBN to reduce the number of groups, limit size of
articles, etc... THIS WILL NOT WORK! I have reduced the number of groups
to less than 1000 and article size to 64000 bytes. I know of ISPs that
between us we have tried every combination known. If you are having this
problem then please reply to me personally or once to this list and I will
contact you regarding this issue. As you know anytime a problem arises
about the interaction of two or more vendors products neither will want to
address the issue. I am interested in finding ISPs that want to assist
Netscape and Cyclone to interact and QUICKLY resolve this problem. I WILL
NOT REPOST this message and I am willing to start another independent list
service for this issue if needed. Please feel free to post this notice to
any other list that you feel might find additional users facing this
problem, without it being treated as SPAM.

Thank-You
Michael Whisenant
mwhisen@airnet.net