Would an email server in the USA cause email to run slow in the UK?

[Walker102]

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...

[kijinbear]

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.

[Walker102]

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?

[janusz]

Originally Posted by Walker102

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?

This will depend on the server speed and load (the latter will obviously be variable). Also the connection is not guaranteed to follow the same path every time, though in practice changes in routing are infrequent.

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.

[Walker102]

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...

[petergh]

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?

[soromak]

Originally Posted by Walker102

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...

I would start from checking a route from your office to your server first, but from my experience you get much better speeds from decent servers hosted at the same side of the pond as you are based. Although performance of the server is another important factor. From what I can see you do not host your mail at the professional e-mail hosting company...so all these problems may add up.

[tobh]

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

[soromak]

Originally Posted by tobh

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

Interesting. I have tried most of the free and a lot of paid providers discussed at this forum while sitting on 1GBps fiber, and I was able to send large messages through servers hosted in Europe significantly faster than through Fastmail, although Fastmail was the fastest amongst these on the other site of the pond.

[tobh]

Originally Posted by soromak

Interesting. I have tried most of the free and a lot of paid providers discussed at this forum while sitting on 1GBps fiber, and I was able to send large messages through servers hosted in Europe significantly faster than through Fastmail, although Fastmail was the fastest amongst these on the other site of the pond.

No inconsistency here. Geographical distance is one of several factors determining server response time.

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

[Walker102]

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?

[Walker102]

Originally Posted by kijinbear

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.

We did the test at Allaboutspam.com and it suggested we are clear of Greylisting and other stuff - I don't know if that's a reliable test but I thought it was eye opening - thanks..

[Walker102]

Originally Posted by petergh

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?

I see what you mean - I think the main problem is (a) in that it takes a long time to download from the server OR what happens is that it starts to download a big email and then stalls, so then you might get 5 other emails stuck behind the big one until you finally get it to download.

For (b) I don't think there is a delay in delvery from when an email is sent (uploaded?)

[Walker102]

Originally Posted by soromak

I would start from checking a route from your office to your server first, but from my experience you get much better speeds from decent servers hosted at the same side of the pond as you are based. Although performance of the server is another important factor. From what I can see you do not host your mail at the professional e-mail hosting company...so all these problems may add up.

Thanks Soromak, do you know of a reliable UK email hosting company?

Should I avoid the mainstream packages from 123, 1nd1, etc..?

[soromak]

Originally Posted by Walker102

Thanks Soromak, do you know of a reliable UK email hosting company?

Should I avoid the mainstream packages from 123, 1nd1, etc..?

Everything depends on your budget and requirements, for example if you need ActiveSync, to sync contacts, calendars etc. with your mobile devices. Many of the company's discussed at this forum is hosted in Europe, for example Runbox is one of them. If you prefer a company in the UK, then have a look for example at rackspace.co.uk. Probably other users could advice you with more choices.
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.