"Faculty and student demand seems to be unsatiable," says Franklin M. Steen, the director of HASCS.

For instance, the mail server processed 312,000 e-mail messages on Nov. 21, and that day saw more than 1,000 users logged on to the system concurrently, Steen says.

By comparison, the system was processing an average of 40,000 to 50,000 e-mail messages a day when Steen became director in the spring of 1994.

"Two years ago, the average user went to the Science Center every day to check their mail," says Rick Osterberg '96, HASCS's coordinator of residential computing support. "The system got remarkably little use. The average user now checks mail every two hours."

Two years ago, the prevalence of e-mail was measured in number of student accounts, a criterion which is now void because HASCS precreates accounts for all incoming first years.

Now, e-mail's prevalence is measured in the number of student dorm network connections.

The Class of 1997 was the first to receive room connections during their first year.

"We're swimming upstream with a torrent coming down," says Dean of the Division of Applied Sciences Paul C. Martin '53, the chair of the FAS Committee on Information Technology (IT).

To meet the increasing demand, Harvard spent $300,000 this summer to purchase new Digital servers--the UNIX machines users log into to use Pine--including a new FAS machine and a new mail server.

While expanding the system to deal with the massive growth in usage, HASCS introduced new problems by installing the new servers shortly after orientation week.

The machines worked well independently, but they were not communicating with each other effectively, a necessary requirement for the smooth functioning of the e-mail system.

Throughout the semester, the channel between the mail server and the FAS machine clogged considerably during peak use, leading to slow mail delivery and long log-in waits.

"The new machines are not near capacity," Osterberg said last month. "They're having difficulty talking to the mail server."

The problems are caused indirectly by the system architecture chosen by Harvard.

Under this system, every time someone checks mail with Pine, the program used most by faculty and students, it transfers their mail from the mail server to the log-in machine.

In contrast, Eudora, another program used to read e-mail, does not require users to log into a UNIX server but accesses the mail server directly and downloads mail onto the user's desktop computer.