Topic: outside e-mail delivery delay.

[David]

Hi,
I run a e-smith 4.1.2 as a mail server, somehow it has a e-mail delay problem,  most of the time, receiver outside the network  can only get the mail after 10 minutes I sent it out, and that was not a large mail. I use outlook express as email client, when I changed the outgoing mail server to the other machine in the local network(which is running e-smith too). That works fine, receiver can get the mail immediatly after I sent out the mail, but that doesn't work on local network, you can sent out mail locally, but receiver never get it, I just wondering where are these mails go.  
Did anyone has this problem before, what should I check to find out the problem?
E-mail delivery delay is really annoying. Can anyone help me?

Thanks a lot !
David

[Nathan Fowler]

Are you running your own fully qualified domain?  Does it have a MX entry?
Are you using E-Smith as an SMTP server or is E-Smith configured to use another SMTP server?

Nathan Fowler

[David]

Hi, Nathan

The e-smith server is behind a router firewall, the NAT table is configured to point the mail.xxx.com to the e-smith box (ip: 192.168.1.11). And I configured e-smith itself as a SMTP server. I found out I set the primary domain name as xxx.com, the other e-smith server(192.168.1.4) in the local network is configured the same,
On the client side I setup mail.xxx.com as incoming mail server and 192.168.1.11 as outgoing mail server, this one has delay, if I change outgoing mail server to 192.168.1.4, no mail delivery delay, but it can't send mail to local.
Any idea?
Thank you for the reply.
 
David

[Nathan Fowler]

Well dude, the only thing I can really think of is the sender domain.  If you are using mail.xxx.com as your E-smith domain (sender domain) what is happening is the recipient mail server is trying to resolve the mailbox name on the server xxx.com, which most likely doesn't exist!  This would account for the 10 minute mail delay and probably the mail won't be delivered at all.  As far as using the client, that would pretty much make sense to me, because you're using a valid SMTP server with a MX entry.

   You need to use a fully qualified domain name, don't use XXX.com, use the host name of your IP address.  If you're a static ip this would be pretty easy, if you're dynamic then it won't be.  Thanks.  Hope this helped you out a bit.

   Nathan Fowler

[David]

Nathan, You are great! After I change the domain name to mail.xxx.com, everything works normal now. Thank you every much for your help!

Regards,
David