Baron wrote:
> I agree ! However I didn't know that I had problems until someone that
> needed a document from me phoned to ask where it was. I checked and it
> had been sent over an hour earlier. So I resent the mail whilst I was
> on the phone.... Nothing ! Nothing from his end either. No failure
> message, nothing at all.

Kids these days. Thinking that Email must arrive instantly.

Email is not a direct form of communication as people think it is.

> We kept trying for over an hour. Then suddenly he said that he had got
> my mail. The re-send from two minutes before. He sent me one from his
> end and seconds later it dropped into my mailbox.

Pretty normal and standard. I do not see this as a problem. The problem
is your perception of email, not email itself.

So what happens with email as a standard is the following. You write it,
then send it to your providers smtp server(A). He accepts it, so you do not
get an error.
After accepting, it will look as to where it needs to go and tries to
deliver it. That other machine(B) accepts it adn looks where it should be
placed. Then the other side will look if it s there.

This is the very basic setup. Often there are some other machines in
between there. Now what can happen is that between (A) and (B) there can
be some delays for several reasons. One is a spam attack, or any other
problem.

So what happens when the one machine can not send it to the other is
wait and try again. First a minute then a few minutes, then an hour then
4 hours. After 4 hours or so if delivery is still not done will it send
you a warning that the mail has not yet been deliverd, but PLEASE DO NOT
SEND IT AGAIN. What happens is that peolle then send it again, because
they do not read.

Now imagine somebody actualy not re-sending it and thuis letting a
potential overloaded server do its job and not add more load to it, it
will try for up to 4 days and only then tell you that delivery is not
possible.

As long as that has not happend, the mail is not 'gone' it is still on
the SMTP sever who is trying to send it. It is in a queue.

Now each message gets a new time and time gets longer over time for a
very good reason. So this will mean that once a message gets through,
it is highly likely that a message you send later will arrive earlier.

>> First test the smtp with telnet and see if you can send mail there:
>> telnet server.example.com 25
>> mail from: houghi
>> rcpt to: user@example.com
>> data
>> test
>
> Nothing only "?Invalid command"

Huh? No 'telnet'? I thought that was installed on every machine as a
standard. If not, please install it. You can not do any network testing
without it.

>> And the see what happens.
>>
>> To test the pop3, you do
>> telnet server.example.com 110
>> user login
>> pass password
>> list
>> last
>> top 0 0
>> quit
>>
>> And see that there is mail in there.
>
> Same here "Name or service not known"

That is not the same. That is different. One tells me that telnet is not
installed, the other tells me that port 110 is not known there.

I hope you understand that the domain names are not real. I do have NO
idea what they must be in your case.

I find it odd that first the command telnet does not exist and in the
second part it does. Please copy and paste whatever you did. Do not
change server names (I can look it up anyway, but I am too lazy) Just
change the emailadress, if possible by just adding .invalid to it.

And again, I think your provider (and theirs) where right in saying
there was no problem. If you want direct communication, right away
instandly, email is NOT the correct tool.

The reason for delay can be various and are to be expected. That is why
SMTP has these delays build into it. I have seen mail pass 7 or 8
different servers and between each one there was a delay. The more
machines are used, the more can go wrong.

Where things go wrong is something you can see in the headers. The most
common reason for a delay nowadays is a LOT of spam arriving at the same
time at the provider, so that there are delays and even timeouts.

And as you recieved your mail as it was supposed to, I would say the
system worked as expected. (Did I mention that email wasn't direct
communication?)

houghi
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