How long should an international e-mail take?

[johnelliott]

I've been trying to correspond with a chap in New Zealand, and there seem to be some substantial delays, several hours, is this usual?

John

[TheLemming]

Sending a message from your computer to his should take a few seconds tops. No matter where they are in the world.

Either he is taking a while to reply, or something somewhere is playing up.

[moleamol]

TheLemming said: Sending a message from your computer to his should take a few seconds tops. No matter where they are in the world.

Either he is taking a while to reply, or something somewhere is playing up.

True, stick receipts on so that you can see when the bugger gets them. It could just be that one of the mail servers somewhere in trhe chain is pants, or maybe he is just slow.

What do you mean, I've not edited anything

>> Edited by moleamol on Friday 24th January 15:53

[Ali_D]

He's probably asleep/in the pub now!

[Terminator]

And it could be due to New Zealand being 11 time zones ahead of us . Sending an email at 2pm GMT here means your recipient gets it just after 1am his time. I send emails for work to Australia and I don't expect replies till the next day.

[johnelliott]

I did think it could be the time differences but there is quite a difference (several hours) in the 'message sent' and 'message received' time tags, even allowing for NZ being 12 hours ahead of us time zone wise.

John

[icamm]

Probably a pants email server somewhere in the stream. Email is a stored-and-forward system where each server receives and holds the email until it can forward it to the next server.

Trying looking at the detailed header of the email. This should list lots of "Received by:" lines which will tell you which servers it's been passed along by and at what time. You should be easily able to spot where the delay is.

[joust]

Is your friend using "SMTP" or "POP3" to pick up his email.... it makes a difference.

Tell me and I'll reveal all

J

[gopher]

Stick a delivery reciept on your message you will get a message when his mail server recieves your mail - that will tell you how long your mail takes to reach him, if he does the same you can calculate the round trip.

I regularily mail the States and don't usually have more than a couple of seconds wait unless we have mail server problems

Cheers

Paul

[CarZee]

joust said: Tell me and I'll reveal all

Oh please... don't

Oh and Molly - read receipts don't work on disparate SMTP systems - they're system specific and get translated into generic delivery receipts when pushed out of an SMTP gateway onto the internet, so you'll know if the mail is delivered, but not if it's been read.

[Oi_Oi_Savaloy]

If it's taken the bus it's going to take ages to get there.....

[CarZee]

Oi_Oi_Savaloy said: If it's taken the bus it's going to take ages to get there.....

yeah - if took the IEEE 488 bus..

should be pretty quick if it took the PCI bus..

[Oi_Oi_Savaloy]

As soon as I wrote that I thought 'that's not funny at all come to think of it' and I was going to get my electronic coat as it were and leave quietly so thank you CarZee for not flaming me! God knows, my previous post deserved it!

[Psychobert]

I've noticed isnatnt messengers are a lot slower to NZ than Aus.. No idea why; could just be dopey mates there..

[moleamol]

CarZee said:Oh and Molly - read receipts don't work on disparate SMTP systems - they're system specific and get translated into generic delivery receipts when pushed out of an SMTP gateway onto the internet, so you'll know if the mail is delivered, but not if it's been read.

Sorry Khazi lad, it's a better indication than guessing if it got there or not though, and I did actually say you can see when he 'got' it, not read it. If I didn't say that I'm going to edit my message so that it does It was my last job after all I'm just not as y as you