E-mails on holiday

It could be that you are in a different time zones. Halfway around the globe, there is a one day difference. Or if you are in the same country, you may have different ISP and the mails are routed to different servers, travels to several computers before it reaches you.

Or possible that your email was already in your Providers Storage, but you are not online yet at the time it was received.

We were in the same country but have different ISP. Still can't help but think that even if the e-mail has to go to several computers it shouldn't take 24 hours. Electricity travels a damn sight faster than I do but I could travel from my place to where she is in less than 24 hour.

Do providers hold on to e-mails in their storage for some reason?

MACA -

You said: "Do providers hold on to e-mails in their storage for some reason?"

Got it in one. Any and all of the various nodes in the network (her ISP, your ISP, intermediate points in the network) may have held onto her e-mail to you for whatever time was convenient / efficient / profitable for them. Frequently, the packets come in to a node and and go out again with a barely measurable delay. Sometimes, due to lots of traffic, or equipment outages, or to the contractual / legal priorities of the owners of the various nodes, they sit and wait a while during transmission, rather than just once they reach your "in-box" at your ISP to wait until you are on-line to read them. But the time that shows up in the message you receive is when that message was received by the sender's ISP.

I had this same thing happen to me earlier today. At 10:00 am, when I first logged on, I read two e-mails from my friend who's now in France. One had been sent yesterday at 3:30 pm my time. The other was sent at 5:50 am my time today. (My mail-reader converts the senders' GMT timestamp to my local time.) I was on-line at 1:00 am this morning, because I was expecting the e-mail my friend sent yesterday. But it didn't show up, due to routing differences or heavy international traffic or *something*. (My husband's the net geek, not me. I suspect he could tell me where the hold up was, if it mattered enough to track it down.) This happens to me and my international friends about every other week.

Surely the soultion is to take your girlfreind on holiday too...or would the wife obect?

Well in actual fact I should say my soon to be ex. This was one of those Dear John e-mails so I'm not too bothered how long that one took but in the future if I get important e-mails (like what time the Simpsons is on TV) then I would like to get it as soon as possible.

Try sending an e-mail to yourself and see how long it takes to be delivered. This might tell you if the delay is with your ISP or the other person's ISP.

I suggest you try a simple experiment to find out how long it takes an email to reach an address. But you have to create two different emails from two providers, in the same computer. Example, Yahoo to Hotmail or Yahoo to G mail or any other email provider that you can easily open. Try sending mails both ways and check the time it is actually received.

I have seen this allot.

E-Mails have been the bane of the INTERNET. It seems that the majority of people think E-Mail is the answer to everything. They use it to do file transfer, when FTP will do it better, faster, and is not limited to file size.

This results in E-Mail servers (at ISP ) always running near maximum capacity. The problem is exasperated with the addition of the spammers, hackers, and viruses.

The solution has been the ISP constantly upgrading their E-Mail server, storage, and software.

It sounds like your ISP is working at max. When E-Mails get backed up, they are simply stored, and processed when the traffic is less (usually the middle of the night.)

It used to be the emails were simply transfered to your account. Now the E-mails are scanned to find Viruses, Trojans, etc in the firewall. This takes time.

You may want to complain to your provider.

As I said before, I'm no expert on computers. What is FTP?

File Transfer Protocol

It is a program specifically designed to transfer files between computers

Most people that make their own web pages use FTP to upload their web pages to the server (Internet)

When the INTERNET was developed. The primary users set up different "protocol' or formats for transferring data.

Each format had a different purpose

There are also protocols for:

1. INTERNET (IP)
2. e-mail (SMPT),
3. protocol for transmission(TCP),
4. Address resolution Protocol (ARP),
5. Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP),
6. Router-Discovery Protocol (IDRP)
7. Terminal Emulation (TELNET), ... chat lines or text communications
8. Network Management (SNMP), and a few others

For more information see http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/ip.htm

I think:

1. INTERNET (IP)please read (TCP/IP)

2. e-mail (SMPT)please read it (SMTP)

FTP is not to transfer files from peer-to-peer but are storage-servers & can be downloaded by individuals on their PCs.

Or you both have space on FTP Server to share files.

This may also be done by having your website(s) for the purpose.

You can not transfer it to another's PC thru FTP.

For that you should have a "Remote-Control" SW like PC-anywhere thru which you can control remote PC & of course transfer files to it.

Three years ago I received an email that was sent 11 months 4 days, before I received it.

Anyone beat that?

Yes it happened to me, it was some months late the date I received.

Actually I was not digesting the "Year 2000" problem.

I just advanced my PC time & date in Aug to be just 10 minutes before midnight Dec' 31 1999.

And went to bed. Checked my PC if something had happened to it.

All I noticed was a reply to my mail which I sent to a friend after the change of date/time.

You can imagine how the dates of my Mail-client, ISPs happened to be

Some spam email comes in manipulated with either a very early date stamp or a future date stamp. The purpose of doing it is to make sure that this particular email is at the top of the stack of other spams that may arrive.

As if it makes any difference.........

See the Header [explored] in message you receive [at server]

=======================================

From karldavi@server3.imagelinkusa.net Tue Jul 10 08:19:31 2007
Return-Path: <karldavi@server3.imagelinkusa.net>
Received: from filin.comsats.edu.pk (filin.comsats.edu.pk [210.56.8.33])
by isb.comsats.net.pk with ESMTP id l6A3JVJr014886
for xxxxx@xxxxxx; Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:19:31 +0500
Received: from filin.comsats.edu.pk (unknown [127.0.0.1])
by filin.comsats.edu.pk (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id 22EB51640D3
for xxxx@xxxxx; Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:59:46 +0500 (PKT)
X-AuditID: d2380821-a9524bb00000543b-84-4692f620c709
Received: from server3.imagelinkusa.net (server3.imagelinkusa.net [72.52.156.12])
by filin.comsats.edu.pk (Symantec Mail Security) with ESMTP id 046E915C261
for <ahmalik@comsats.net.pk>; Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:59:44 +0500 (PKT)
Received: from karldavi by server3.imagelinkusa.net with local (Exim 4.63)
(envelope-from <karldavi@server3.imagelinkusa.net>)
id 1I860t-0006qg-PI
for xxxx@xxxxx; Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:03:44 -0400
X-Boxtrapper: 3qNyTFHs5rqbB9JYajcJFeqq_Hd33M4O
From: register@karlsforums.com
To: xxxxx@xxxxxx
Subject: Re: Re: Your email requires verification verify#sUPXFikktoYGJo5sO5ZEnaR_sE2oByBS
Message-Id: <E1I860t-0006qg-PI@server3.imagelinkusa.net>
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2007 23:03:43 -0400
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - server3.imagelinkusa.net
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - xxxxxxxxxx
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [32235 12] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - server3.imagelinkusa.net
X-Source: /usr/local/cpanel/bin/boxtrapper
X-Source-Args: /usr/local/cpanel/bin/boxtrapper register@karlsforums.com
X-Source-Dir: /tmp
X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA==
X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV version 0.88.2, clamav-milter version 0.88.2 on isb.comsats.net.pk
X-Virus-Status: Clean
Status: R

.... ...... ...

=======================

See

how much is done from node to node & and in your ISP ?