Dear Student,

Of my 274 students, 177 (or 65%) have "@263.net" in their email addresses.

You are one of them.

As a result, you never receive some email messages that are sent to you.

They are simply lost.

Why? Because 263.net offers terrible service.

How do I know this? Because when I send email messages to students, I often get a message back reporting that the email delivery attempt has failed.

This is not because I am using a foreign email server. This happens when I am using the Tsinghua University email server.

You can see this for yourself. Below is a typical message I recently received after trying to send an email to the students in my MO1 class. The message is from MAILER-DAEMON@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn. It is an automatic message from the Tsinghua email server I am using, telling me that it was unable to deliver the message to 5 of the recipients (rouqingren@263.net, tianaiwei@263.net, yuanybaby@263.net, smilingyw@263.net, jeffren1982@263.net).

These are, however, correct email addresses; and at other times, messages sent to them are successfully delivered.

Also, there is nothing wrong with the way I sent that particular email message. There were 25 other recipients with @263.net addresses, and there was no error report concerning those recipients.

It is clear that @263.net sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. In other words, it is unreliable! You will receive some messages, and lose others.

"But Uriel, I have no money. I can't afford better email service."

This is where you are making your mistake. As a Tsinghua student, you are entitled to get a Tsinghua email account and use it -- for free.

Well, the price is not exactly zero. But it is practically free: less than two RMB per month. This is trivial compared to the ridiculous inconvenience, lost time and confusion caused by lost emails.

In a separate message, I will forward to you the recommendation of your fellow student Hong Ye, who has been using the Tsinghua email service for over a year. His message also tells you how you can obtain your own Tsinghua email account.

Please do not delay. The service offered by 263.net is lousy, crappy, terrible. You have a better alternative, and it costs you practically nothing.

Cheers,

Uriel

P.S. I will send this message more than once in an attempt to increase the likelihood that you receive it.

-------------------------------------------------------
From: <MAILER-DAEMON@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn>
To: <uw@urielw.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 11:08 PM
Subject: failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<rouqingren@263.net>:
202.96.44.30 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 <uw@urielw.com>: Invalid User
Giving up on 202.96.44.30.

<tianaiwei@263.net>:
202.96.44.30 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 <uw@urielw.com>: Invalid User
Giving up on 202.96.44.30.

<yuanybaby@263.net>:
202.96.44.30 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 <uw@urielw.com>: Invalid User
Giving up on 202.96.44.30.

<smilingyw@263.net>:
202.96.44.30 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 <uw@urielw.com>: Invalid User
Giving up on 202.96.44.30.

<jeffren1982@263.net>:
202.96.44.26 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 <jeffren1982@263.net>: Invalid User
Giving up on 202.96.44.26.