Velocity Reviews - e-Mail Problems Questions ?

Robert11 wrote:

> a. Occasionally, not very often, but it does happen, e-mails just
> don't seem to get delivered.

A term I use for that is 'dropped on the floor'.

A message which is dropped on the floor disappears. It does not
generate a 'belated' so-called bounce from the recipient server, which
is caused by a server accepting a mail for delivery and then failing to
place it in the recipient's mailbox -- but then 'turning around' and
emailing a newmail to the sending From about the delivery status
failure. And it does not generate a proper or real so-called 'hard'
bounce from the sending server which has failed to transact for some
reason with a receiving server -- in that case your own server would
provide you with the delivery status failure.

> It shows that they did get delivered, but they don't.

That statement is ambiguous and meaningless in the 'did get delivered'
portion in context with 'It shows'. You didn't say what showed what,
and there is nothing that showed that the email did get delivered in
your description. Perhaps you mean that the item appeared in the Sent
mail folder, which is /not/ evidence that something got delivered.
There are strategies for showing something got delivered one place but
not another, but you/we haven't begun to discuss that yet.

> I can verify
> the problem, sometimes,
> with test e-mails back to myself that don't make it. no error smg's;
> they just don't make it.

I understand that concept.

> b. Also, sometimes I get an error msg that they could not deliver an
> e-mail as the address
> is invalid, but if I try a few hours later with the exact same
> address, it does go thru.

I am not crystal clear on that example.

> Is this fairly typical ?

No.

> Any comments particularly regarding (b) which really interests me a
> lot as to what might be happening ?

Some causes for mail to be dropped on the floor going backwards from
recipient mailbox to sending server.

The recipient is actually receiving the mail, but it is going into some
kind of 'block sender' disappearing act caused by the recipient being
configured wrongly with a spam filter or other message rule created by
accident. Many people use 'block sender' when they receive a spam. If
they received a spam with your address in the From, which is common and
possible and normal with spam, then all future mails from you would
disappear caused by their mailuser agent disappearing them. That is one
of many reasons that people shouldn't use block sender on spam, to say
nothing of the fact that it is ineffective.

The recipient's mail provider's server is dropping the mail on the
floor. That is a common problem today. The provider is implementing
some stupid spam or viral filter which deletes mail automatically which
the recipient doesn't know about -- or the recipient has failed to
understand how their provider allows for such filters to be configured,
if it is optional. My provider gives me optional configuration to see
any spam or virus mails which it has deemed positive, but most people do
not configure to examine their spam and virus labeled mail.

Some mail server between your server and your recipient's mailbox is
dropping the mail on the floor for some unknown reason that is difficult
to diagnose or discuss unless you give us more information on specifics
than you have. Whenever a *real* and existing problem needs to be
discussed, it is never an advantage to convert a real problem into a
hypothetical or imaginary problem by trying to describe it in vague,
general, and non-specific terms. Real problems described in real terms
naming real domainnames works much better. The problem with email
addresses is that in a public forum people want to keep things generic.
So, the discussion remains generic, when a better discussion would be a
specific discussion.

Something went wrong with your mail provider's outbound mailservice and
your provider's server or webmail or whatever system failed to provide
you with adequate failure information. An example of that would be
gmail's server failing to forward but also failing to provide any kind
of useful information about the nature of the forwarding failure.

--
Mike Easter