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Mail:  Why does mail take so long to get to Microsoft and AOL?


Q.  Why does it seem to take six to 12 hours for mail from halcyon's mail
    server to addresses inside Microsoft.com?  This doesn't make sense, given
    that mail from halcyon addresses to the outside world, and mail from
    Microsoft to the outside world seems to transfer in less than a minute. 

A.  Microsoft's mail gateway is very busy.  The mail gets delivered
    *immediately* -- you can demonstrate this by using /usr/ucb/mail with the
    -v option -- but sometimes waits in their queue for hours.  It isn't
    something we can control.  That's not much of a surprise, given the huge
    volume of mail they receive and transmit.


Q.  How about AOL?  I have the same trouble there sometimes.

A.  It's the same problem, pretty much.  We watch our mail queue regularly,
    and if we see big backups, we'll post notices to the halcyon.announce
    newsgroup.
                                                                            

(29-Mar-96/maiwdmts/WRD)
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