Rice Webmail upgraded

By Catherine Bratic     9/4/08 7:00pm

Rice's Webmail received an update in May to make it faster and better able to handle the large volumes of e-mail sent to and from Rice accounts every day. Barry Ribbeck, Director for Information Technology Systems, Architecture and Infrastructure, said the update replaced old hardware and software from the Webmail interface, which could no longer accommodate Rice's increasing volume of mail. The Webmail page also got a makeover, which Ribbeck hopes will make commonly used features such as spam filters and vacation messages easier to find. Ribbeck said the update was made following student requests for faster Webmail.

This is the first time that an upgrade has been made to the interface portion of the system, Ribbeck said. Only Webmail servers and storage have been updated in recent years. He said the old Webmail system's hardware was over five years old, and the operating systems and the version of the software had not been upgraded.

"This was old when I got here [in Dec. 2005]," Ribbeck said. "It was time for an upgrade . So in a sense, the entire Webmail service needed an overhaul. IT years are kind of like dog years."

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Ribbeck estimates the old hardware might have been from 1999 or 2000.

For most students, the only change to their Webmail is a more efficient system. Ribbeck said Webmail's basic functions remain the same, but the page now has a new skin. All old e-mails, which were stored on an unmodified piece of hardware, are still intact. However, a handful of people still using the old e-mail client will now be forced to switch over to the main system.

Ribbeck said these changes have resulted in positive responses from students so far.

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