SMTP response times

[royalsid]

Hello all,

I have been a customer with Jaguar for about 5 years. When they moved from Houston to ATL, I noticed my smtp server response was slower. I finally had some time to work on it with support and we still cannot really pin down a cause. Server config is fine (its not the ident setting), I can send emails just fine and receive. It just takes a good 30 seconds to get a response on my server. I am in DFW, TX. Can someone else geographically try it out for me and tell me how long it takes for a HELO to show up? Support can get it instantly, so I am trying to rule out a network connection, but so far the trace route is all good with no delays.
TIA

69.73.140.103 - server ip

My trace route
Tracing route to bananatek.com [69.73.140.103]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 10.0.0.1
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 66.150.212.177
3 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms 10.30.200.45
4 56 ms * 4 ms 64.47.33.3
5 5 ms 4 ms 5 ms border1.ge1-4.redgap-8.dal004.pnap.net [216.52.1
89.73]
6 5 ms 5 ms 5 ms core2.tge5-1-bbnet1.ext1.dal.pnap.net [216.52.19
1.33]
7 6 ms 5 ms 5 ms 0.ge-0-1-0.GW3.DFW13.ALTER.NET [65.208.15.229]
8 4 ms 5 ms 5 ms teliasonera-gw.customer.alter.net [63.65.123.46]

9 25 ms 62 ms 25 ms atl-bb1-link.telia.net [80.91.246.73]
10 36 ms 31 ms 24 ms globalnet-127291-atl-bb1.c.telia.net [213.248.90
.54]
11 25 ms 29 ms 31 ms atl-core-g-g1-6.gnax.net [63.247.69.178]
12 35 ms 25 ms 25 ms core-gi1-1.nocdirect.com [209.51.131.90]
13 27 ms 25 ms 26 ms borgle.nocdirect.com [69.73.170.19]
14 25 ms 25 ms 25 ms vps.bananatek.com [69.73.140.103]

Trace complete.

[Ron]

What ports are you using, and which email client?
Do you have the same problem using webmail? If you're running CPanel, can you try accessing your webmail using secure port 2096?

Just thinking..

(I hope you're using secure ports....)

[royalsid]

Ron,

I use the standard port 25. I use a wide array of clients from outlook to iphone to pop from gmail. Pop is working great, I can get emails really quick, its the transfer part that there is a wrench in the system. When I send on my clients, I get my delay. I dont use cpanel.

[royalsid]

I dont use any webmail from the server itself. I have sent an email by using mail on the server, seems to work rather quickly as well.

[Ron]

Well I'm not on a vps here, my server is a cpanel server, and I was having a similar slow sending problem just on iPhone... it was taking a huge amount of time to send after upgrading iOS to 3 (IIRC)... Somehow after the upgrade I was trying the wrong port... I forget if I was on 25, but when I switched to 995 and used secure, it started to fly again.

Also, a lot of these servers are set up for smtp after pop, so perhaps something is going on there.

(As an aside, trying to use CPanel's secure webmail on the iPhone is *painfully* slow to authenticate, but then normal after that. No other browser has that issue.)

I'm running win7 and don't have a simple telnet proggy, but I tried using PuTTY to open up a telnet session on port 25 to your server and it timed out after about 40 seconds, but it behaved the same way on my server as well, so I'm not sure what I doing wrong.

Good luck to you

EDIT: telnet is included with Win7, but you have to turn it on:
Control Panel -> Programs -> Turn Windows Programs On/Off -> Telnet Client

[Ron]

BTW your ISP might be blocking port 25, try setting up secure port 465 instead just for fun?

[royalsid]

I will look at 465 after some sleep, but isp does not block 25 for me.

[Ron]

Okie dokie....my port 25 is blocked by my ISP, so I can't try from here, but I tried from my server:

 time telnet 69.73.140.103 25
Trying 69.73.140.103...
telnet: connect to address 69.73.140.103: Connection timed out
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out

real    0m44.999s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.003s

Then I tried my own server -- the server I am logged into:

time telnet 69.73.187.210 25
Trying 69.73.187.210...
Connected to manticore.nocdirect.com (69.73.187.210).
Escape character is '^]'.
220-manticore.nocdirect.com ESMTP Exim 4.69 #1 Sun, 03 Jul 2011 04:41:52 -0400
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail.
ehlo foobar
250-manticore.nocdirect.com Hello manticore.nocdirect.com [69.73.187.210]
250-SIZE 52428800
250-PIPELINING
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
250-STARTTLS
250 HELP
QUIT
221 manticore.nocdirect.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

real    0m5.933s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.004s

[Gwaihir]

I will look at 465 after some sleep, but isp does not block 25 for me.

Could they be actively filtering / scanning its traffic instead, thus causing the delay? Do indeed try the secure connection on 465 for comparison.

[Ron]

Wim,
I haven't tried a third server to access mine, but with telnet installed on manticore, it timed out after 45 seconds trying his server, but worked just fine trying manticore itself.

It would SEEM to me that his server isn't accepting port 25... firewall? exim (or whatever) config? I dunno. My confidence level on this test is pretty low. But either way, I'd wanna be using a secure protocol for email on a vps.

[the_ancient]

Even if it is not outright blocked I can assure you it is actively monitored and scanned which may cause some slowness, , you should not use port 25 for outgoing mail if there are any other alternatives...

[JPC-Masood]

@royalsid

I see you have unmanaged VPS with no control panel and you are using sendmail for smtp. Something is wrong with your sendmail configuration. The delay is coming out from sendmail. There is no problem with VPS or network connectivity because if you connect to port 110, the pop server responds immediately. However port 25 hangs and does not respond immediately. I have verified DNS resolution works instantly so its not the cause. Its been years I have used sendmail and I doubt any of our techs use it. If you try and search through sendmail user groups someone may be able to provide you some troubleshooting tips.

@Ron

You cannot connect to port 25 out from your server via telnet due to firewall. Only mail server is allowed to make those connections. Before this firewall rule it was next to impossible to track down spammers who used to send spam directly to remote servers via their scripts instead of delivering email to local mail server.

[royalsid]

What would be the recommendation to replace sendmail?

[JPC-Masood]

What would be the recommendation to replace sendmail?

We recommend managed VPS with cPanel that comes with exim. It is supported not only by our system administrators but also by the vendor cPanel.

[Ron]

@Ron

You cannot connect to port 25 out from your server via telnet due to firewall. Only mail server is allowed to make those connections. Before this firewall rule it was next to impossible to track down spammers who used to send spam directly to remote servers via their scripts instead of delivering email to local mail server.

Aha!!