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Email Comments, Questions and Miscellaneous Share your opinion of the email service you're using. Post general email questions and discussions that don't fit elsewhere. |
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5 Feb 2014, 04:16 AM | #1 |
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Would an email server in the USA cause email to run slow in the UK?
Hi
We have two offices in the UK and our send and receive email is running slow in both offices. Our email server is in the USA so I wondered if that is the reason? Would it run quicker if we move to an email server in the UK? (The USA email sever IP is 162.213.248.247) Thanks for any answers, gratefully received... |
5 Feb 2014, 11:39 AM | #2 |
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It takes about 0.05 seconds for data to go back and forth between the UK and the US East Coast (e.g. New York), and about 0.1 seconds between the UK and the US West Coast (e.g. California).
If you're just sending a few emails at a time, the difference should be hardly noticeable. I'm about 0.19 seconds away from my email server, and I don't notice any delays. If there is any delay, it is more likely to be caused by greylisting or some other form of spam filtering. The geographical location has little to do with it. On the other hand, if you're sending thousands of marketing emails or newsletters, one by one, the difference can easily add up to several minutes. If you're sending tens of thousands of them, the difference can be more than an hour. In this case, moving your email server closer could speed things up quite a bit. |
5 Feb 2014, 06:06 PM | #3 |
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Thanks Kijinbear, I'll have to look into the grey listing etc, I think there could be something in that.
We don't do any email marketing or mass emailing but we often deal with graphics and the attachments can be 10 to 20 Megabytes - I wonder if that's relevant? Is there a calculation we could do to compare how long it would take to receive an email from a UK and a California Server at say 20 Megabytes? |
5 Feb 2014, 06:50 PM | #4 | |
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Quote:
And don't forget something obvious: the actual speed is determined by the the slowest link. So if your UK offices have slow connections, the server location is irrelevant. |
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5 Feb 2014, 07:46 PM | #5 |
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Thanks Janusz....
both our offices are on BT Business Broadband which seems ok for speed with browsing, mp3 downloads, etc. I'm wondering about the variations in email server speed, load, size of attachments, route to the server, possible bottle necks (?).... With various factors involved, would it be less of a risk to overall performance if the email server was in the UK instead of USA? Or am I barking up the wrong tree... |
5 Feb 2014, 08:48 PM | #6 |
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I think we need to be more specific about what kind of slowness we're talking about here.
Does it: a) take a long time to donwload email from the server, or b) take a long time from you send an email until it arrives at the destination (or vice versa)? If b), could you please post the full headers of a delayed, received, message (properly munged to protect the innocent), please? |
5 Feb 2014, 08:52 PM | #7 | |
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5 Feb 2014, 11:05 PM | #8 |
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Some time ago, I compared response times of mailservers in different locations. I live in Germany. The fastest responding server was Fastmail (nomen est omen) on the US East Coast, faster than all servers that I tried in Europe.
So geographical distance may be a factor, but it seems to be not the decisive one. Greetings Tobias |
6 Feb 2014, 01:32 AM | #9 | |
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6 Feb 2014, 06:40 PM | #10 | |
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Another factor to consider may be the time zone. If you use a server across the pond while it's nighttime there, the server could be faster than a busy European one. Just a speculation. Cheers Tobias |
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7 Feb 2014, 12:38 AM | #11 |
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That reminds me of something my boss said - perhaps another factor is Server Maintenance...
Apparently what happened to us once was that there was some maintenance done on our server over night but that was night time in the USA which was daytime business hours in the UK... With a server in the USA, I wonder if there is a also a Greater Risk of Downtime if there is a lot more miles of cable and junctions that could go wrong in between the client and server? |
7 Feb 2014, 12:41 AM | #12 | |
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7 Feb 2014, 12:42 AM | #13 | |
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For (b) I don't think there is a delay in delvery from when an email is sent (uploaded?) |
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7 Feb 2014, 12:44 AM | #14 | |
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Should I avoid the mainstream packages from 123, 1nd1, etc..? |
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7 Feb 2014, 02:28 AM | #15 | |
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If you decide to stick with a server at the other side of the pond, then run a free trial of Fastmail and Polarismail, they are both very reliable companies. |
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