Worrying aspect to recent email delays

I'm finding that the headers of delayed incoming email are giving Received times that belie the delay e.g.:

> Delivered-To: [snip]@hannibal.dreamhost.com
> Received: from mail01.mail.esat.net (mail01.mail.esat.net [193.120.142.6])
> by hannibal.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4EE86175DB6
> for <ryanair@chrisjj.com>; Wed, 9 Feb 2005 09:30:55 -0800 (PST)

was not visible in the mailbox when checked at 09:45 - 14 minutes later.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Could this correspond to a delay in murdock, the machine hosting this mailbox? And might the absense of a "Received: by murdock" field indicate that this hop is likewise missing from the DH logs that belie the total loss of some messages recently?

Ive noticed major problems with the mail lately - sending and receiving. our mail is hosted on murdock as well. when i asked about this issue, this was the response:

Our server murdock has been having numerous problems with email. We are
working on them to improve the performance of the machine but there is no
ETA at this time on when those will be complete. You can ignore the data
loss emails as they were not meant to go to you.
If there is anything else I can help you with just let me know.


not too promising. the big problem is that i just suggested moving a clients service to dreamhost because ive been using them with no issues for quite awhile. now that the move has been made they cannot send email or receive for periods of time throughout the day which is frustrating.

> there is no ETA

Very disappointing and unprofessional. If mail is not back to normal in one week, I'm jumping ship.

I've been paying close attention to hosting providers -- both email and web -- for a couple years and I've come to the conclusion that it is best to host email with a provider that is 100% focused on email hosting. I'm still happy with DreamHost for web hosting, but for email hosting I recommend one of the providers that I tag with a stylized M on my IMAP Service Providers page, which is here:

www.ii.com/internet/messaging/imap/isps/

Every single web hosting provider that I use or pay attention to is having email problems.

Hope your email problems are resolved soon!
Nancy



Infinite Ink ~ http://www.ii.com
Deflexion & Reflexion ~ http://deflexion.com

Thanks for that Nancy.

> Every single web hosting provider that I use or pay attention to is having email problems.

I understand this. But in addition to environmental factors affect all providers, there are DH-specific problems of its own making. E.g. in just a few months here I've found flaws that let an unauthorised party variously destroy, hide and read incoming mail.

Chris

PS Nice to see you again - after we last met in a forum I tried to send to some info for your page but could not get through your email filter. Next time I'll know to find you here!