MULTINET SMTP mail is "slow"

[Chaim Budnick]

Some user are complaining that mail being sent via SMTP is slow.

I sent several messages to an address, and I was able to duscern the following:

1. With the send a job is queued and executed almost immediately.
2. There are no pending jobs
3. There are NO files in the spool directory
4. The mail (a simple text file of one word) took about 1 minute till it reached my smtp address.

I am trying to determine from where the delay is coming.

Who is actually sending the mail? OpenVMS (via some MULTINET process) or is OpenVMS merely passing the mail to some exchange server?

Thanks,

Chaim

[David B Sneddon]

Chaim,

How long it takes will depend on the path between
the source machine and the destination machine.
I know that the mail here goes via an exchange server
and a message can take up to about 4 minutes to
be sent. This is part of the exchange configuration.
So it really depends on what is being used as your
mail gateway.

Regards
Dave

[Mic V.]

Right -- mail to the local node or cluster may be delivered very quickly, whereas mail that's routed elsewhere can take longer. I usually try to get more information when I hear "mail is slow":

- where are you sending FROM
- where are you sending TO
- how big is the message you're sending

Then I try to figure out whether there's a pattern, and go from there. In particular, it seems that Domino servers route mail slowly.

[Ian Miller.]

is there a MX record for the destination address? If you enable smtp logging you will get extra information which may help determinte how the email is being handled.

I don't know if you can do that for MULTINET. You could try using this search facility
http://www.multinet.process.com/scripts/mxarchive/as_init.com?Info-multinet

[Garry Fruth]

If you are using Microsoft Outlook 2000, you can view the Internet Headers of an e-mail message using menu view->options. The internet headers have timestamps which may point you to where the delay is. FWIW, my guess, a virus scanning mail gateway.

[Chaim Budnick]

The problem was indeed with the exchange server - behind the scene. The server was rebooted and mail was delivered within expected time.

Thanks,

Chaim