SMTP losing e-mail?

[Turtle]

Sent several e-mails (using smtp.sentechsa.com) during the past hour to my own sentech e-mail address as well as two other e-mail addresses I have on two totally different servers. None of my test e-mails have arrived. Is smtp.sentechsa.com silently throwing away e-mail, or might it just be delayed? This worries me, as I actually use this smtp server to send business-related e-mail .. am I panicking too soon?

 

[MrGray]

I wouldn't recommend using seniletech's email system for any critical business email as it is extremely unreliable. It sometimes takes up to 24hrs for an email to arrive at an mweb account and recently it was stripping all outgoing attachments for a while - decidedly amateurish.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of by mere mortal men - Shakespeare

 

[Brolloks]

I found the same thing. It took about 8hrs to send a test message via smtp.sentechsa.com. Pop seems to be okay (sometimes) Had a day or 2 when it took about a minute or 2 for mail to go out and come back....

 

[loosecannon]

i personaly run SMTP on my sentech link that way i am in control of it and only use sentechs mail server when there is reason to [DUL Blocked] ...

 

[loosecannon]

hey smokesignal monkeys ill come set up a SMTP server for you with built in AV/Spam Blocking all for free ...

infact ill set up a cluster ... if you goiung to do it do it properly FFS

this is so dejavu telkom internet had the same problems ... until there servers were upgraded one of the fixes was to deny access from ADSL addresess [SAIX took care of the ADSL SMTP Relay]

 

[Gallderhen]

Mail Server is taking alot of strain because of open-relays on a handfull of myWireless users. They are attending to the problem.

 

[loosecannon]

that is bull**** how can a open relay affect there server they dont have a fugging clue what open relay is ...

open relay is when a untrusted third party uses a server to relay mail this will be delivered to the destination directly unless you set SMTP forwarding ... now if the user is lame enough to leave there server open relay the chance is small it will forward via there network ...

me thinks that there server is not coping with the spam/virus load it is under ... and instead of blaming your customers fix your server ...

and god help you if you block SMTP ...

 

[Gallderhen]

If you say so.

 

[kaspaas]

Many viruses infect PC's and then take the Outlook smtp setting for spreading themselves.

I've seen such a PC sending 2 GB of viruses a day over ADSL.

At 100k per virus (lets assume) that is 2000 emails per day. If you have a few of these, it will slow down any mail server. If one is running anti-virus software on the system, and the software tries to inform the spoofed "from" addresses that they tried to send viruses, this quickly builds to an avalance of mails being queued and the poor server trying to mail to non-existing addresses.

Of course, this munches bandwidth as well

If Sentech does not check for viruses, well, it is pure wastage of bandwidth.

I'm very in favour of a law to prohibit people sending viruses for more than a day from ever again owning a PC!

This said: On the Telkomsa.net home page, they show stats on how many viruses they stopped on their servers. If Telkom can setup a system to handle the load, Sentech has to proof their ability to do so as well.


South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.

 

[loosecannon]

this virus avalanche is not to be confused with open relay.

the telkomsa.net mail cluster run two free systems on linux spam assasin and clam anti virus both straight forward to setup .... ill do it for them as i said for free [almost they must publicly aknowlage they are useless prats]

 

[Gallderhen]

Spam Assassin is too slow (effective, but too slow). It can process a max of 8 mails a second with a corpus of 500 spam and ham mails, on a dual Xeon 3.2Ghz

 

[Brolloks]

gallderhen

what is limiting the speed of spam assasin? Is it hardware or software related?

 

[Gallderhen]

I think its because its written in perl (software related). The maximum instances of a spam assassin program I could run was 8 and they did one email a second each without overloading the machine too much.

Currently I'm looking at DSPAM (www.nuclearelephant.com)

 

[loosecannon]

this is true but spamd does solve some of the issues ...

there 2 options spend money on HW or SW i personaly choose HW every time ... other options are very expensive ... [unless you have ideas]

 

[Brolloks]

Gallderhen
Software related would make sense because a Dual 3.2Gz Xeon should be able to do more.

 

[Gallderhen]

Brolloks, yup. I've pushed DSPAM up to 60 mails a second with a load average of 0.01% over 5min.

 

[Turtle]

Seems (some of?) the mail did go through - after 8 hours! 8 hours just for mail to be sent from mail02.infosat.net to mail01.infosat.net. This is pathetic, such a long delay makes e-mail basically useless.

 

[Jhbgirl]

Mine won't send at all today. I won't even start with mail that took 12 hours yesterday to get to the recipient... (opens yet another ticket)

: 256k : 110 Helderkruin JHB : 10% :

 

[arf9999]

Guys,

I'm having the same issue...Maybe this has been discussed elsewhere...is there any way to change my smtp server to smtp.mweb.co.za (I have an account)? At present it will not authorise me to send.

-A

MW128, Tower <b>60</b>(Northpark Plaza), Signal:16%,S-N-L: 7, BER: 45%

 

[soup]

Yes, me too. I use my email as a business tool and it makes me look like a loser when my mails don't go through. I too have tried the smtp.mweb.com route, but it says that open relays are not allowed. (I have a valid mweb account)

Some suggestions would be very useful.