Has the Post Office Taken Over the Internet?

Can't be the Post Office or it would have arrived with postage due.

Probably got held up at a server somewhere. These messages don't go direct from iPad to PC, but bounce around between servers. It is possible that one of the servers screwed up, went offline for a spell, or some other routing error.

What?! You mean this free service is not guarantee perfect and instantaneous? I am outraged! I could do better with tin cans and string. I just told my wife to email me hourly today and we'll see what happens. This could have been an isolated incident...or a government conspiracy.

Just for grins I just sent one to my office computer. Took less than 30 seconds. You must be on some watch list..

Check the manual on your email client, turn on the particular emails headers (they are normally suppressed) and see its routing and the time it passed through the various email routing systems.

Hooker

We have tried some different scenarios and checked the headers. The delay, about 3 hours, occurs only when using her Ipad at her office. WiFi elsewhere works fine, and the ATT network works fine if we don't have WiFi. As soon as I figure out how to paste in a post (help!), I'll show the headers. I suspect her IT dept could tell us what is happening, but she doesn't want to ask them just yet.

Don't know about whether the P.O. has taken over the Internet, but I'm sure there's more to Verizon's quizzical geek's message, "Can you hear me now?" than they're willing to let on. It's no accident the guy in their adverts is always standing within earshot of his target when he asks the question so, yeah, they can hear him now. I doubt his phone is even turned on and so, all else being equal, it could probably be said that the Roman Empire, the Ancient Greeks, the Medes and the Babylonians all had the same quality of service then as Verizon advertises now. They could hear their own geeks just easily, I'm sure, and that without even bothering to appear to need some sort of intermediary whatsoever, such as holding a small brick-shaped object to their ears. Where I live Verizon's phone service is sketchy at best and it's tagline takes on a whole new meaning for guests at my home. For instance, we get bars only whilst sitting on my couch (and nowhere else on our property), and even that is a gamble. Worse, voice messages often circumnavigate the galaxy first before settling in my voicemail's inbox. My son, for instance, left a voicemail last March. That's right: March of last year. The voicemail arrived at my phone just last week. Verizon has yet to come up with a good tagline for *that* particular feature. Not only can I not hear you now, Verizon, I have my doubts as to when I actually will. Perhaps by then the messages will have some historic interest. Speaking of which... I read this morning that some folks somewhere have opened one of those so-called 'Time Capsules' containing bits of this and that, all buried just 100 years ago. Very interesting to see what sorts of everyday things were commonplace back then. It got me thinking that Verizon should jump on that bandwagon too; they're very good, it seems, at preserving Old Stuff. Blessings to you and yours, -europium

Here's the pertinent headers:

Received: from [10.132.71.156] (mobile-166-137-143-155.mycingular.net [166.137.143.155])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id 34sm15164078ibi.8.2011.01.28.15.53.37
(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5);
Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:53:38 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Hey There
From: Juliette Smith <jrs924@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Message-Id: <FDF8ABDD-0D55-4491-B34D-415BD02253E7@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 12:03:08 -0600
To: kerry <dr.kerrysmith@gmail.com>
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Mime-Version: 1.0 (iPad Mail 8C148)

X-Mailer: iPad Mail (8C148)

Google gmail has a very good Spam filter; that's probably where things got backed up. Things that can make email delays more likely or longer include attachments, particularly .exe, .zip, or MS Office documents, links in the message or signature block to not-too-well-known web sites, etc.

Google gmail will refuse attachments with the extent .zip and quite possibly delay or refuse to deliver the main message. When you need to send a Zip archive, you need to rename the extent; I had someone recommend changing .zip to .stupidgoogle, which "everyone" knows to edit back to .zip - and, yes, it does work for me. This is probably true for .exe files and possibly others.

From what you sent it appears that the email got held up internal to the gmail system.

I should have asked this before but I didn't think of it at the time:

It seems that you are using an email client on your local pc and downloading email(s) from gmail? Are you using the "Check Mail" button on your email client or are you waiting for the gmail system to "send" email to your local client?

If you are using the "Check Mail" button then I'm pretty sure the delay was internal to gmail. This seems to be a fairly regular occurrence with gmail. Not much can be done about that, except complain.

If you are waiting for gmail to force feed you the emails be aware that gmail has a built in delay to their delivery system that, in the past, has been based on your gmail usage habits. Check the gmail online parameters to see if you can adjust this. I haven't investigated this for a couple of years so things may have changed.

Additionally, most email clients have a setting to automatically go out to your accounts and check for mail on a timed basis. For example, my Thunderbird client is set to go out and check my various email accounts every 10 minutes when I have T'Bird running.

Just throwing out ideas.

Hooker

Good ideas. I am using Outlook to pull mail from gmail. I checked in my Outlook and set it to send/receive every 5 minutes. I'll look at gmail options, too. And will retest and post.

That seems to speed things up; now the delay is more like 15 minutes. Gmail says I should use IMAP instead of POP, so I am trying to make that change as well.