Email response time

Anyone know how I can check email response time? I'm trying to figure out if my email server receives slowly, or if the person sending's server is slow. Thanks

Jim

Greetings:

Uhm, why not just ask someone different to send you an e-mail? If that one arrives late too, then you know it's your server. If it arrives quickly, then you know it was a problem with the original user's server.

:thumbsup:

I know i'm blonde, but not that slow. :P

I need to show proof to a client.

Jim

Greetings:

Oh, haha. Ok, that makes sense. Didn't mean to sound condescending. In my earlier days I did high end tech support, and ever sense then, well let's just say the experience gave me a different take on some things.....

It is VERY difficult to prove this sort of thing to a client. When I troubleshoot things like this with other admins, we exchange server logs, smtp transport logs, syslog files, mrtg graphs of router traffic, etc. etc. This makes it very easy to determine where the problem is, but it's also WAY WAY WAY too nerdy of a thing to be able to do with a client.

If the client has concern about when you're receiving e-mails and the like, the best thing you can tell them to do is to turn on "read receipts". Most email clients have these, and it basically allows them to get a notification of when you receive and open the e-mail (assuming you configure your client to accept read receipts). It's not foolproof, nor does it prove whose server is the slow one, but it does at least provide a way to document to your client when you actually are receiving his e-mails (to show that you're not brushing him off, etc.)

One of the things that can slow down the delivery of e-mails, is DNS issues with the offending server. AKA your client has an e-mail server that caches dns lookups incorrectly, or for too long of a period of time, or doing lookups against a dns server that's slow or is having problems. One way to help get around that (from your end), is to setup an e-mail account on a common domain, that is likely to already have its DNS entry cached. Something like yahoo, hotmail, etc. etc. Not the most professional of things, but it may provide a way for you to get e-mail from your client's buggy server a lot faster. Granted, there any number of other things that could be wrong with his server, but in my experience, this has proven to be the most common.

hope that helps..