Cause of mail delay?

Customer Support Customer Only Discussion
1

A customer is complaining about mail delays. I don’t think the problem is with JodoHost’s servers. But, I need to be able to provide some explanation or justification to the customer. Below are cleaned header fields from a delayed message. I’m not sure I’m understanding them correctly. You can see there’s a 4 hour delay between two of the steps, what looks to me to be between two servers at the sender’s end. Am I interpreting that correctly?

(qmail 993 invoked by uid 399); 21 Dec 2010 20:41:01 -0000
from sc3app27.example. com (HELO smtp-server.example. com) (123.123.123.123) by mail10… with ESMTP; 21 Dec 2010 20:41:01 -0000
from ex02ht01b.ad.example. com (ex02ht01b.ad.example.com [123.123.123.123]) by smtp-server.example. com (PMDF V6.3-x14 #31420) with ESMTPS id <[email protected]. com> for recipient@custdomain. com; Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:40:57 -0500 (EST)
from ex02cas01b.ad.example. com (123.123.123.123) by ex02ht01b.ad.example.com (123.123.123.123) with Microsoft SMTP Server (TLS) id 1.2.3.4; Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:40:57 -0500
from ex02mail02.ad.example.com ([123.123.123.123]) by ex02cas01b.ad.example.com ([123.123.123.123]) with mapi; Tue, 21 Dec 2010 15:40:57 -0500

Any thoughts on what would be happening at that step so that I can share that with my customer?

Thanks,
Tim

2

Look at the timezone stamps, doesn’t seem to be that many hour delay when taking them into account.

3

Well, both my client’s domain and the sending domain are supposed to be in EST. The sending domain is a local university a few miles from his location. His domain is hosted with you with mail10 as his server. So, are the timestamps off or do I need to adjust the configuration on his domain somehow?

4

Actually it is not uncommon for headers to show in UTC, I am no expert in this however so that was just something I noticed with one on UTC and one on EST

5

No problem. I’m not an expert either, hence my posting this here. I’m trying to get in touch with the client to find out if the messages are really taking that long or if maybe it’s just a misunderstanding. If the messages are being sent stamped with a time in one timezone but received as if they were in another, maybe there’s no delay happening at all.

6

I see no delay. Can you tell me if they ‘feel’ there is a delay, or the ‘Date’ header (which is not posted above and added at source) reflects delay?