email issues

So what is going on?  All my services except IMAP email are working.  The email occasionally connects.  It started early 12/7/2016 and since then my several accounts have only succeeded sync on MS Office Professional 2010 about 2 or three times (in ~36 hours).  My phone (iPhone7) is working a little better, but still big delays.  This happened about 2 years ago when they first rolled out IMAP and failed to build out for the load.  It took them over 6 months to fix it that time.  Why am I not surprised?

 

All COX is saying about it at this point...

"We are currently experiencing intermittent problems affecting some customers' Email service. You may experience error messages when accessing, reading or retrieving email, or using other email features. You can access email via our Webmail service.

So yea, I think Cox moved the email servers off Cox's network during a server clean up. High traffic my bum, someone in engineering made some big moves and didn't bother telling ANYONE in support. This blind sided them. 

I urge everyone to take this time to find another email provider. Even after Cox "fixes" them I have a feeling this is the beginning of the end for Cox email. 

Tecknowhelp is right. There isn't a sudden surge in traffic, randomly in the second week of December. That is a complete copout. They have server issues, and don't think enough of their customers to give us the truth. It is disappointing that they have us completely in the dark on the issue, and they don't feel the need to provide updates or give a status on their home page. I want a refund for this entire week.

Very insightful, and I think you are on to something.

I just did an nslookup for imap.cox.net, and it fails. Using online tools reveals no A records for imap.cox.net.

On a hunch, I hardcoded the previous IP address for imap.cox.net into Outlook, and things "miraculously" started working again. This is not a long-term solution, and I don't intend to leave it like that, but it's indicative of the root cause.

They have done something with their mail servers, and they are not sharing this information with their customers. Shame on you AGAIN, Cox. The email service has been horrible as of late.

To continue my train of thought...

I checked Google's DNS, and imap.cox.net DOES return an IP address there. After seeing that, I set my router to use Google's DNS (8.8.8.8-primary and 8.8.4.4-secondary), and I am now connecting to the IMAP server.

Cox, your customers should not have to diagnose these issues themselves.

Any update on this issue? Why no response from Cox? Seems like the moderators are "johnny on the spot" when there is some low laying fruit to pick, but as soon as a hard or embarrassing problem comes along...