On 19 Jul 1999, Vladimir Litovka wrote:
> What is very long time? In my case, for example - it is mail for cellular
> operator's clients, and this mail becoming unnecessary for recipients
> very quickly - in few hours, not more. So in some cases mail growing old
> itself, and this process doesn't depend on server's down time.
The server's down time does matter - if the server were "up" the messages
would have been delivered before then were old.
I'm not very familiar with the email RFCs; is there an "expiry-date/time"
header that MTAs and MUAs support ?
The real problem is that that the email -> cellular relays aren't up to
the job - they should be able to accept incoming mail at the first
attempt, and (for secondary MX servers) pass it down the line quickly.
Telcos don't have much incentive to improve email -> cellular relays,
since messages from a phone can be charged through the standard phone
billing system, but incoming SMTP doesn't have a billing address.
It would be tempting to add retry rules for these servers so that the
message was retried frequently, but that would just overload the primary
servers even more.
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
A.C.Aitchison@??? http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna
