Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 13:00:32 -0400
From: Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca>
To: pgsql-www@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: what is up with the PG mailing lists?
Message-ID: <20071101170031.GQ27676@crankycanuck.ca>
References: <25716.1193887595@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<DADF296033D290EF9634F611@ganymede.hub.org>
	<26669.1193891360@sss.pgh.pa.us> <47299585.7030402@hagander.net>
	<47299957.5020605@postgresql.org> <2968.1193919208@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<20071101080959.49f3087b@scratch>
	<20071101152333.GM27676@crankycanuck.ca>
	<4729F105.30704@hagander.net>
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On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 04:30:13PM +0100, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> getting. Sure, SMTP should have latency. But a modern SMTP system
> shouldn't take hours to deliver an email.

This isn't automatically true, and is explicitly contradicted by the
relevant RFCs.  I think it shouldn't be the _habit_ on such systems,
but AFAICT it isn't.  

But "hours to deliver an email" is in fact totally reasonable on a
busy system.  I think good mail administrators aim for "in general,
minutes".  The problem here is the perception that it is too often
outside the "in general" assumption.  I think that perhaps it'd be
more useful in this discussion to archive, over (say) six months,
cases where you think the headers are showing unexplainable lag.  I
think there probably _is_ a problem, actually, but I haven't yet
written a procmail recipe to catch all pg-[list] mail that has any
header where the hop time was (say) over one hour.  _That_ is the
sort of catalogue we need.

A
-- 
Andrew Sullivan  | ajs@crankycanuck.ca
The fact that technology doesn't work is no bar to success in the marketplace.
		--Philip Greenspun