[kwlug disc.] Email problems

[Rashkae]

Insurance Squared Inc. wrote:
> I have sporadic problems with getting my email off of my server.  
> Running Linux (though it's happening on all the machines on my home 
> network) through a home router, through a dsl modem and over to my 
> Mandrake server.
> 
> What happens is when I use thunderbird to download my email from my 
> account on my server, it sits and spins for quite a while.  Then it 
> seems to connect and download fine.  Uploading emails is instant. Web 
> traffic is instant as well.  It's only downloading email from my server 
> to all the machines on my home network that has this problem.
> 
> Also it seems sporadic.  It's been doing it for a few days now nonstop.  
> Prior to that it hadn't done it in a few months.  It almost acts like 
> it's having nameserver problems like where it waits for one nameserver 
> and times out to go to the second.  But I'm not having any ns problems.
> 
> My email client says it's connected immediately, but I don't see the 
> connection in the logs on the server until after the delay.  It's not my 
> end computer since it happens on different email accounts on different 
> computers at home here.
> 
> I've powered down and up my router and modem.  No change.
> 
> I'm stumped - any thoughts on how to diagnose this further?
> 
> 

What about the name server resolution on your mail server?  If your mail 
server is trying to do a reverse lookup of your home IP address when a 
connection is made and it's taking a long time for those to resolve, you 
would get similar symptoms.