Re: [exim] Retry hint left over after successful delivery

John W. Baxter wrote:
> On 5/31/10 4:54 AM, "W B Hacker" <wbh@???> wrote:
>
>> IOW - short interval is what today's 'consumer' logically expects / prefers.
>
> Mostly. We exchange email with a (physically) neighbor ISP which
> 1. Frequently decides to delay accepting mail from us for no discernable
> reason--generally when it does that it also delays accepting mail from
> places like the hotmail servers (testing with live.com address), gmail and
> Yahoo (so it doesn't seem to be a problem with mail from us).

Sounds like an MTA with a serious 'personal problem'!

Back-end DB gone walkabout perhaps?

>
> 2. Once the mail has gotten into their system, whether that is delayed or
> not, it can take up to 2 hours or so for it to show up in mailboxes.
>

Now THAT is a scandal....

> 3. And that same internal delay often happens with test messages sent as
> one of their users using their servers, to the sending account (mine).
>

WTF are they doing? Printing it out, moving it by bicycle courier, scanning it
and OCR transcribing it back in? ....and the bicyclists union periodically
calls a work stoppage?

> The above does not do much for the perceived swiftness of email around here.
> And, naturally, they have outsourced the entire email operation--it was
> worse when it was in-house.
>
> --John
>

The delay for time-zone and waking/working hours (mis)match et al will always
have to await the addressee being in the mood and in front of something with
access. But smtp does do, so is less intrusive than a phone call.

But the underlying transport of the message should not take more than one minute
usually, ten minutes worst-case, even if some 'Friend Using Commonly Known
Wishful Information Technology' is wanki.. er 'trifling' ... with greylisting.