Emails Suddenly Rerouted Through Time

June 22, 2009 8:40 AM

My friend/business colleague's Verizon emails suddenly now turn up in my Earthlink email in box hours late. Where do we start looking for where the problem lies?

This has only been within the past two weeks or so -- it only affects a friend of mine who has his email through Verizon. I have Earthlink. For some reason, his emails to me are now showing up in my inbox anywhere between 6-24 hours late; the timestamp on his end shows that he sent it at 3 pm, but it doesn't appear in my inbox until about 10 pm, say. Or 2 pm the following day.

So far as I can tell, his emails to me are the only ones I'm getting late (I've kept an eye on other people's emails to me, and they're all coming in okay) and I'm the only one suffering a delay (all his other friends seem to be getting his emails in a more timely fashion). Exactly where would he and I begin looking for where the problem lies, and what exactly should we look for?

I'm HOPING that this isn't one of those "just one of those things" situations - he and I were smack bang in the middle of coordinating a theater event WHILE all this was going on, and having emails go late and missing REALLY complicated things. We got through it okay this time, but I'd REALLY like for this not to become a permanent state of affairs.

posted by EmpressCallipygos to computers & internet (8 comments total)

It's probably Earthlink. I have had issues with this kind of thing myself with them.
posted by Sidhedevil at 8:44 AM on June 22

You can get some insight into the problem by looking at the email's Received: headers. Your email client probably hides these, but there's probably a way to display the full headers and see them. Every mail server that touches the mail will add a received header with a timestamp. Look for the big delay, and be careful of time zones when comparing timestamps.

BTW, delaying mail is sometimes done on purpose as a spam prevention technique. But the usual implementation will only delay the first mail from a strange system.
posted by Nelson at 9:16 AM on June 22

BTW, delaying mail is sometimes done on purpose as a spam prevention technique. But the usual implementation will only delay the first mail from a strange system.

Similarly, I'm assuming it would also not suddenly start delaying email from a system after having delivered things on time from that very same system for the past four years.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:19 AM on June 22

Oh! Oh, adding this data point because, who knows, maybe this is part of it -- this same friend also started having trouble with his Verizon router at about the same time. From what little I know of teh Intarwebs I don't see how this could be an issue (he just goes to other computers and signs on to his account there and handles things that way), but who knows.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:23 AM on June 22

what is a verizon router? are the other computers he uses on a different network?

tech support for both companies will have each of you send an email to yourself to show that within network everything is peachy keen. then they will both point fingers at the other ISP or just at the internets at large.

fwiw, i've been experiencing delay when i send email from gmail (on a cox connection) to someone who works at verizon. the delay isn't all the time, but it's certainly there.
posted by nadawi at 10:22 AM on June 22

It's probably Verizon, and he should call them and complain extensively if he has not already. Tell him not to let them brush it off and say it's his fault. If he isn't tech-savy but has a friend who is who could call on his behalf, that might help.

My office uses Verizon, and some of our mail has been delayed for the last two weeks, on and off. It's super annoying! For example, I just this morning got an email my boss sent last Monday. Most of our delays have been around a few hours to half a day. We are resolving it by switching hosts, because Verizon is being spectacularly unhelpful. The office manager got nowhere until we had a tech person call in to them. We're in the Boston area, fwiw.
posted by min at 10:43 AM on June 22

nadawi:

what is a verizon router?

The box thingy that Verizon sent him which plugs into the cable/DSL line (I don't know which he has) that lets him connect to the Internet. I believe I mis-spoke and I actually mean the modem (I tend to screw those terms up and use them interchangably).

min:

It's probably Verizon, and he should call them and complain extensively if he has not already. Tell him not to let them brush it off and say it's his fault.

I know he's already having a lot of back-and-forth with Verizon over his home connection as it is. I'll mention this to him and encourage him to bring it up as a "while I have you on the phone..." issue -- it's probably good to know that you're having trouble with this as well, because it sounds like you started having trouble the same time he did.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:45 AM on June 22

Follow-up -- I have no idea if my friend fixed this or not, but it seems to have resolved shortly after this. I'm calling it a fluke and putting it to bed.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:14 PM on July 22