Delay of mail delivery - Hosted exchange provider

Question

I recently signed up to a new hosted email provider. When I send mail (from OWA, OR Outlook) there is a delay of up to 3 minutes from when i send the message, to when it's received (in my gmail account for example)

I've listed the headers below.

Is there anything I can advise my new email host to do? My previous email host delivers within 5 seconds!!

New email provider:

Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 85.119.248.8 is neither permitted nor
 denied by best guess record for domain of ****@*******.com)
 client-ip=85.119.248.8;
Received-SPF: none (relay005.apm-internet.net: domain at alexjamesbrown.com
 does not designate permitted sender hosts)
From: Alex Brown 
To: "****.*****@*****.co.uk" 
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:48:04 +0000
Subject: testing
Thread-Topic: testing
Thread-Index: AQHKcdzZg4oiDsOYIEio/7k6bCk8BQ==
Message-ID: 
Accept-Language: en-US, en-GB
Content-Language: en-GB
acceptlanguage: en-US, en-GB
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
MIME-Version: 1.0

Here are the headers using my previous exchange host:

Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 85.119.248.8 is neither permitted nor
 denied by best guess record for domain of ****@*********.com)
 client-ip=85.119.248.8;
Received-SPF: none (relay005.apm-internet.net: domain at alexjamesbrown.com
 does not designate permitted sender hosts)
From: Alex James Brown 
To: "****.*****@******.co.uk" 
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:48:30 +0000
Subject: testing from o
Thread-Topic: testing from o
Thread-Index: AQHKcdzyY1iBFWiol0ykG6xPQUZiTg==
Message-ID: 
Accept-Language: en-US, en-GB
Content-Language: en-GB
acceptlanguage: en-US, en-GB
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
MIME-Version: 1.0

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 30 '09 at 18:53

It could be a function of how many hops the email is going through now as opposed to how many it went through previously. Each hop is going to add some time to the delivery process. Also, as there's nothing in the RFC's that states any time requirements or even a guarantee of delivery of email you probably need to come to grips with the fact that your email may take a little longer now than it used to. My advice: count the number of hops it's going through now as opposed to what it went through previously and check the timestamp at each hop. This might point you to a hop that's adding some delay to the delivery process.

I was going to count the hops in both sets of headers, but honestly it was giving me a headache. — joeqwerty, Nov 30 '09 at 18:54

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 30 '09 at 17:11

0

The new service may be greylisting. This can add small delays in mail delivery.

answered Nov 30 '09 at 17:11

3dinfluence

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1

I've never heard of an email host greylisting it's own users. This wouldn't make sense to me. Why would they greylist email going THROUGH them as opposed to email going TO them. Greylisting, AFAIK, is applied to incoming email from foreign senders, not outgoing email from known senders. – joeqwerty Nov 30 '09 at 17:30
Ah yeah I missed that part that he was sending to an outside email account. I somehow read it that it was going in the other direction. To my knowledge gmail doesn't use greylisting. – 3dinfluence Nov 30 '09 at 18:23

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 08 '09 at 02:49

It could be a plain number of hops issue or Greylisting. Greylisting causes delay of at least 5 minutes and also it is never used for internal emails. Therefore it is unlikely to be that.

However to confirm, you can try the Online Email Server test at http://www.allaboutspam.com/email-server-test and see if that gives you any clues.

Delay of mail delivery - Hosted exchange provider

3 Answers3