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Russell Duffy wrote:
Now if you can just figure out why some of my mail arrives on time, and some an hour later, while yet other messages pile up and get delivered all together. I'm basically reading the messages on the web archive page so I can see them in order.
Cheers,
Rusty (10-20 AFR)
Email is a store-and-forward protocol. For the most part, you don't send email to me or the list; you send it to your service provider's email server. (The exception being if you run your own email server. ) Your service provider is getting stacks of email from a lot of other people, and just sticks everything in a queue until it has time to get around to it. Once it gets around to your email, it looks at a header to determine where you want it to go and then looks around to see if it has a way to contact another server that can get the mail there. It may also do virus checking, attachment checking, etc. Your ISP may also spread the load across several machines, and all of those machines may not always be available.
Once your ISP's machine finally gets around to you, and fire off your email, the intire process is repeated on the other end. In fact, the ISP at either end may be a 'distributor' for the guys with the actual wires in the ground, ie your ISP has an ISP, in which case your email may go through the process many times.
So, if I have a direct connection to the backbone with my own mail server, I can fire off and email and have it delivered with minimum delay. If you're on a cable modem, sharing the line with neighbors busily mass forwarding the latest email chain letter with a video clip of last night dog show, your mail will get stuck in a long line waiting forever to get out.
Email is not, and was never meant to be real time.
I just which I knew half as much about fuel systems as I do computer networking.
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