On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:45:58 +0100 Philippe Landau <lists@user-land.org> wrote:

Messages are again distributed with a delay of about 20 minutes. Is there too much on the server used (lists4.suse.de) ?

There are a lot of reasons for seeing delays from listservs. The first is that the server itself is bogged down and your emails are delayed arriving at the server. Usually once emails hit the server, the list manager turns the email around quickly. The most usual cause of delays is when the MTA sends the email. Essentially (while there are efficiencies I am generalizing) each outgoing message is sent to each respondent's server individually. Usually this requires that the MTA fork into several processes or threads. There is usually a limit here, so a number of respondents get placed into the queue. Additionally, the receiving server must also perform a handshake. There is also a number of timeouts that also cause some delays. The email's internet header can give you some indication as to where the delays are. Looking at the headers for your message, there was a 4 second delay from your server to mx1.suse.de, then it appears that there was a 4 minute delay internally from mx1.suse.de to relay2.suse.de (where it scanned the message for viruses). The listserv appears to have turned the message around in a few seconds, and it took 6 additional minutes for the MTA at lists4.suse.de to my server. So, on the SuSE side it appears that relay2.suse.de was a slight bottleneck. Then the message sat on the MTA's queue for 6 minutes while trying to connect to my server. -- -- Jerry Feldman <gaf@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846