[Discuss] OT - Mail Server Speeds

[alex at pennace.org (Alex Pennace)]

On Fri, Oct 02, 2020 at 07:15:54AM -0400, epp at mcom.com wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Oct 2020 23:19:09 -0400
> Alex Pennace <alex at pennace.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Oct 01, 2020 at 10:04:57PM -0400, epp at mcom.com wrote:
> > > Is it possible for a service provider to slow down the response
> > > times from their servers?  
> > 
> > It is possible for a service provider to deliberately add additional
> > response latency (wait a little bit before sending a response). But it
> > is far more likely that increases in latency are simply due to
> > underprovisioning the systems involved.
> 
> I question whether there might be simply too many users active at once?
> It hosts Yahoo, AOL, Verizon and (currently) AT&T's customers' e-mail.

It is a distinct possibility that the issues you are experiencing are
cyclic, and if you tried again later you may have better results. But
the notion of "too many users active at once" implies that things
would be just fine if it weren't for those other users who want to
check their email during the day. I would instead argue that the real
question to answer is "did Verizon/Oath provision their email service
to handle a reasonable peak load?"

Email hosting can be very scalable (of course, poorly designed
implementations may have bad scaling issues). If it is scalable, then
it is a a straightforward matter of provisioning it with more
resources. If the implementation isn't scalable, then modifying it to
be so is possible (albeit more difficult). It is fair to say that if
the problems you are encountering are due to resource limitations,
then it will be possible for Verizon to correct the situation. Verizon
*wanting* to spend the time and money to address the issue is another
matter, of course.

-- 
Alex Pennace, alex at pennace.org