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Except this time, it is Yale’s fault and not Hotmail’s. Many Elis woke up this morning surprised to find their inboxes completely devoid of new mail, the result not of summer doldrums but rather a faulty Yale e-mail server.

Early Monday, one of the servers that handle’s Yale e-mail failed, according to Information Technology Services officials, and as a result no e-mail messages sent to students, faculty members or staff whose mail goes through that server have been delivered over the past day and a half. Mail sent to the affected users — several thousand in total, according to ITS — bounced back, but usually not for hours after the original message was sent.

Sometime tonight — if all goes as planned — users on the affected service will get a flood of e-mails, as everything sent to them over the last 24 hours will be delivered. Messages sent to the affected useres between 11 p.m. Sunday and approximately 7 p.m. Monday are gone forever, however.

Haven’t gotten any e-mail lately? Enter your NetID here to find out to which mail server your account is linked. If you’re on Post Office 13, you are one of the affected users. If you are on another server, you are just really unpopular.

Update, 10:39 p.m. Tuesday: ITS says the e-mail problems have been resolved.

Update, 4 p.m. Thursday: Though an official initially put the number in the thousands, ITS has now determined that only 557 people were affected by the outage, said Jane Livingston, the director of communications and planning for the University’s Finance & Business Operations division.

(Photo: Photodisc)