Long delay in receiving email.

This happens every once in a while and is happening right now. I have email to an alias (vppr@novitoastmasters.com with a target email of Gmail.) that is taking over 20min to arrive. I have sent it directly to the underlying account without a delay. It is only when it goes through FTH that I see this delay. Normally, the issue resolves in a few hours, but just putting this out there in case there is a bigger issue.

Stan Green
Club: 3733

There is never any guarantee on the length of time it takes to deliver an email. It depends on how busy the network is between the email servers, how busy the servers are at the moment they try and connect.

Depending on the time of day, the day of the week, and the day of the month will depend on how many emails are being processed by FTH.

FTH is a free service and only has finite resources.

Yes Brian, I get that. But even with extreme load, it should not take over 2hrs (as of now) to receive an email. I am just pointing out the issue in case there is a bigger issue with FTH. (i.e. the mail forwarding service is down). If people don't report issues, how will you know they exist?

Stan,

Thanks for your report! Please don't think that we are not interested in hearing about this. Unfortunately, because of the complexity of the email processes and the large volume of emails that we process, it can be a challenge for us to do an effective investigation without some sort of insights (e.g. trends and patterns) and assistance provided by users to help us know where to look. We do log email information that we can sometimes use for troubleshooting, but sometimes doing an effective investigation with the overwhelming amount of information we have can be like looking for a needle in a haystack without some assistance from users to help spot trends and patterns. I consider us lucky that we have been able to figure out the root causes of some of the problems that we have encountered given low limited our tools and resources are.

Performance issues can be the most difficult type to investigation because of everything we are asking our one single server to do. Also, sometimes the causes are outside our control.

With this in mind, are you seeing any trends or patterns with this issue? For example days of week, times of day, etc. We do sometimes see more slowdowns at the beginning of the week--it seems that many clubs send their emails to members on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Hi Steve,

Yes, I understand how complex tech is. Windows 10 has more parts (lines of code) than the most complex airplane! I do a lot of my own troubleshooting before I post here. I also look for treads out of the norm.

I just go the bounces this morning (8 am EST). Here are the headers for two of the messages. (I have changed the sender email address to limit spam to that address.) Basically, we are seeing a timeout error.
1)
This is the mail system at host gateway24.websitewelcome.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The mail system

<admin@novitoastmasters.com>: connect to
mail.novitoastmasters.com[50.19.253.65]:25: Connection timed out


Reporting-MTA: dns; gateway24.websitewelcome.com
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 96F7A5F76
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; XXXXXXX@theultrasignal.com
Arrival-Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2021 19:49:53 -0600 (CST)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; admin@novitoastmasters.com
Original-Recipient: rfc822;admin@novitoastmasters.com
Action: failed
Status: 4.4.1
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; connect to
mail.novitoastmasters.com[50.19.253.65]:25: Connection timed out
2)
This is the mail system at host gateway23.websitewelcome.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The mail system

<treasurer@novitoastmasters.com>: connect to
mail.novitoastmasters.com[50.19.253.65]:25: Connection timed out


Reporting-MTA: dns; gateway23.websitewelcome.com
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 22D8DCB7
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; XXXXXXX@theultrasignal.com
Arrival-Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2021 21:37:19 -0600 (CST)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; treasurer@novitoastmasters.com
Original-Recipient: rfc822;treasurer@novitoastmasters.com
Action: failed
Status: 4.4.1
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; connect to
mail.novitoastmasters.com[50.19.253.65]:25: Connection timed out

Thanks,
Stan Green
3733

the IP for the mail server for theultrasignal.com was blocked for spam, I have removed the block for now.

You are using a shared hosting company (hostmonster.com, websitewelcome.com) that allows spammers, your email can be blocked again at any time.