Topic: Email slow to be received

[robw]

Hi All,

I have had a couple of reports of email being received a long time after it's sent. One example is one sent on Monday at 11am and received Tuesday at 23:42. Not sure why this would have happened as there was no server outage etc over this time and other mail was getting through fine. This is on a SME 7.1 server that has been up and running fine for over 6 months.

I have included the email header below for reference. Replaced company specific info with xxx to protect the guilty.

Any help gratefully received.

************************

Return-Path: <mike.hatfield@xxx.net.au>
Delivered-To: andy.xxx@proxy2.xxx.net
Received: (qmail 2137 invoked by alias); 17 Apr 2007 23:42:22 -0000
Delivered-To: alias-localdelivery-andy.xxx@xxx.com.au
Received: (qmail 2134 invoked by uid 453); 17 Apr 2007 23:42:22 -0000
X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.8 required=5.0
   tests=DATE_IN_PAST_24_48,HTML_MESSAGE
X-Spam-Check-By: xxx.net
Received: from 111.111.111.111.static.comindico.com.au (HELO xxx.net.au) (IP Address)
    by xxx.net (qpsmtpd/0.32) with ESMTP; Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:42:14 +1000
Content-class: urn:content-classes:message
Subject: RE: Additional software license
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:01:05 +1000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
   boundary="----_=_NextPart_001_01C77FC2.B5EE0920"
Message-ID: <C9EB7F9692947B49B44E6795BADB3D851F1565@midworld.xxx.local>
In-Reply-To: <OKEOKJALFBBOIEBPGBNDEEDKCBAA.andy.xxx@xxx.com.au>
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.5
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
Thread-Topic: Additional software license
thread-index: Acd9fdjiEtAkUiC5RPevif+G/GQv/gCRNN1A
From: "Mike xxx" <mike.xxx@xxx.net.au>
To: "Andy xxx" <andy.rui@xxx.com.au>

[JonB]

The sender mail server delayed sending the email.

The email was received by your mail server on  Wed, 18 Apr 2007 at 09:42:14 +1000 (your local time i.e +10 hours from UTC). It was delivered to the mailbox on 17 Apr 2007 23:42:22 -0000 (UTC time which is 18 Apr 09:42:22 local time).

The email was processed in 8 sec from the time it was received by your mail server.

The swap between UTC and local time in the headers is confusing.

Check the qpsmtpd logs for the time the mail should have been received i.e around Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:01:05, give or take a few sec's,  to see if the email was rejected or defered for any reason. You may also need to see the maillogs of the sending mail server to see why it was delayed.

If your server is rejecting the email the most probable reason would be because the sending mail servers IP address is listed on one of the RBL's that you have set up. Once the sending mail server gets a reject (550) it should stop sending the email and remove it from its queue. However I note that the sending server is Exchange and it often ignores 550 and defers email for re-delivery. Exchange also has a nasty habit of leaving the occasional outgoing mail stuck in its outgoing queue until Exchange is rebooted.

<rant>Exchange is good at what it was designed for, a Groupware solution for local networks. It should never be allowed to face the internet. </rant>

Jon

[robw]

Jon, many thanks for your reply. I'll check it out on our server and ask them to check on their's.

Ain't MS wonderful!?