Every one of us have seen messages like this at least once...

Started upload of 08au03ab.28481.5873.623562.131_1_0
Temporarily failed upload of 08au03ab.28481.5873.623562.131_1_0
Backing off 1 hours, 24 minutes, and 2 seconds on transfer of file

These messages are shown when the computation of an unit is completed and the result is returned to the local BOINC process. These are not the ones when the local BOINC process connect to the server to send the "Ready to report" units.

That happen when the site is under maintenance. But is it normal that our local seti@home process try to connect with the master server at that moment? I would think no. I think it should simply connect to our local BOINC process, which will later connect to the master server.

Is it a problem in the seti program or is it me?

This is normal. As soon as a WU is processed, it will upload the results to the server. Then the results must be "reported" which is either done automatically, or manually.

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> These messages are shown when the computation of an unit is completed
> and the result is returned to the local BOINC process. These are not
> the ones when the local BOINC process connect to the server to send
> the "Ready to report" units.

Not quite correct. For each unit, the BOINC client on your machine connects to the servers at SETI ---THREE--- times: once to download the unit from the SETI server, once to upload the results to the SETI server, and once to report the completion to the SETI server. EACH of those three connections could fail, and some of them result in the messages you mention.

Yeah, they perhaps could have made it do the "upload" and "report" in one step, but this arrangement may have been chosen so that they could (sometime in the future) separate the "data server" (where you do downloads and uploads) from the "statistics server" (where you "report" completions). Even now, it lets them separate the processing: one process accepts the uploaded data, updating the UNIT's statistics; another accepts the report and updates YOUR statistics.

> Not quite correct. For each unit, the BOINC client on your machine connects
> to the servers at SETI ---THREE--- times: once to download the unit from the
> SETI server, once to upload the results to the SETI server, and once to report
> the completion to the SETI server. EACH of those three connections could
> fail, and some of them result in the messages you mention.

Ok... So I was wrong. I was thinking that if a queue is used for the units to be processed, a queue is also used once the units have been processed.