Now, couldn't we discuss this for a while? GRIN!
Most folks seem to think they are directly connected to the list server.
E-mail is weird. I remember getting a e-mail from a friend who lived a few blocks away (in Charlotte, NC, USA) and seeing by the routing info that it had come to me via Australia, and a few points in between. Sometimes you can get a message from both directions at the same time. For instance I could send you an e-mail there in Norway, and it would propagate around the world and arrive almost simultaneously from England via Canada and Iceland, and from Germany via Russia, Japan, and the Phillipines. When that happens the mail server is supposed to note that they both have the same message number and toss one in the bit bucket. Sometimes that does not happen. If your e-mail client is smart enough it will refuse the extra, but sometimes it fails to do that. Then there are those messages that some server somewhere in the world for God only knows what reason decides to change the message number. Need I go on, and on, and on...?
Yes, I know you know all this, Jostein, but maybe it well get through to some of the less knowledgeable list members that e-mail is really complicated system.
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Jostein wrote:
Tom, I agree that spam filtering is a very likely cause for messages to disappear, but then again there's the problem of repeated messages.
I think there must be more than one problem at work here...
If a mail router close to PDML (say two hops away) has problems with eg. flooding, that could explain many of the problems we observe on the list in one go.
Messages can be delayed for a variable amount of time, depending on the load of the victim server, and may loose messages while flooded. If it uses Sendmail to propagate the messages, it may also loose track (during floods) of which messages are sent, and start all over again from the top of the queue. Resends can also occur if the victim server fails to send a confirmation of reception back to the previous server in the chain. Then the previous server will assume it lost and resend it after a while. Then, when the server gets on top of the load again, both messages are propagated.
This may of course happen with messages destined TO the PDML server as well. It would give much the same results, but to fewer users.
I'm also sure Doug is aware of this and keeps the path clean as far into cyberspace as he can.
Jostein
I think a lot of e-mail hits the bit buckets at ISP's due to overly aggressive SPAM filtering. Charter seems to be doing this. My webhost labels anything it thinks is SPAM as such and sends it along. I would guess I would miss fewer messages if I were to switch PDML over to there.
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Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Thanks for the reminder, Steve, although there have been numerous instances here recently in which messages have not shown up on the list at all, even after a couple of days. Perhaps we need an analog version of the internet <LOL>
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com/graywolf.html
