>   Their SMTP port seems to be available at the instant that I
>   tried it.  Does your e-mail client now queue when an SMTP
>   port is not immediately available?
>
>   I checked: there is NO MX host involved, and the 3 authoritative
>   DNS at SPRINTLINK.NET all agree as to the IP address of this
>   host.
 
Also, one major problem here is the general meltdown of the backbone.
Getting from one net to another can be EXTREMELY painful, especially during
the 8am EST to 10PM PST time window.
Metcalf (Ethernet inventor) is reported as saying that the NAPs are now
showing 10% packet loss on a regular basis.
 
You can usually get from one customer of your provider to another on that
same provider without too much trouble, but crossing over a NAP to another
provider can be miserable.
 
Try traceroute if you want to see how bad things are.
The routers don't respond, or respond slowly when they get busy and it
becomes obvious quickly where the choke points are located.
 
Even with at 10meg pipe directly into MCI, there are places I simply can't
get to after about 9:30 in the morning. Either the NAP is full or the
destination pipe is small (or both) and things just time out.
 
Fortunately the SMTP protocol has timers measured in days....
And in the words of Mr. uncertainty.... the worse things get the more we
look to see how bad things are and contribute to things getting worse.
 
T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
Information Services and Computing (ISC)   University of Pennsylvania
Internet: [log in to unmask]             [log in to unmask]
          [log in to unmask]                 http://pobox.upenn.edu/~magill/