Date: Tue, 30 Aug 94 19:27:53 CDT
From: "Cave Newt" <roe2 AT midway DOT uchicago DOT edu>
To: OKRA AT max DOT tiac DOT net, babcock AT cfa DOT harvard DOT edu
Subject: Re: mail lag
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu

>>   I'm on two mailing lists.  One of them, when I post, it shows up a few 
>> seconds later.  This one takes a long time.  Why?

> Have you ever seen a mail loop?  Somehow an address on the list becomes
> invalid.  Mail to that address bounces, but the mailer bouncing it doesn't
> send it back in a format that the sender recognizes as rejected mail.

That's why some RFC (822?) specifies the use of an Errors-To: header.
Of course, there are broken sites whose mailers don't recognize that,
either...not to mention mailing lists which don't bother to include
one. :-/

> A more mundane explanation could be aslow or overloaded
> link or machine somewhere along the path.

Like the beginning of it, maybe.  (At least some of the clarkson machines
used to be very slow PCs, apparently running DOS...)

Greg Roelofs