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Richard, Just a few data points for you: (*) Delays and Internet Message Headers - In order to check where the primary bottleneck(s) a delayed message is, you need to examine the Internet message header. Many e-mail clients have features to display this. I’ve attached the header of the message you sent to me. - A full analysis requires many different tests that sending reference messages a different times of the day/night, obtaining routing stats, etc. Suffice to say, a quick and dirty method would be to examine the headers on this message when you receive it (don’t use the timestamps in the attached header for your receipt calculation except to compare the relative server exchange times). - The key areas to examine from the header is the first “Received” timestamp (In this case when my POP server received your message) which is 16 Aug 2004 09:02:32 -0700 or 19 Aug 2004 02:02:32 GMT) and the various “Received from” timestamps from any contributing servers along the way. - I’ll leave the full analysis up to you, but in this particular case a substantial delay occurred (did you strip off the original message for brevity?). The timestamps look suspect. - Internet Headers can be spoofed and timestamps are no exception. This is still moderately tolerated by individuals using port-25 (SMTP) mass mailing zombies (soon I hope this changes), but for an ISP server to intentionally modify a timestamp on an e-mail message would be a criminal act and cause for an investigation. - Distribution lists like this one will naturally have a delay. The processing of 1000’s of SMTP messages takes a considerable amount of server and network resources. (*) Spam Filtering (Server-Based) - AOL has spent millions in advertising campaigns regarding SPAM “blocking”. Some server-based SPAM filters will DELETE perceived SPAM e-mail, while others (such as SpamAssasin) will still strip certain artifacts (such as any HTTP referrer blocks) and still send a modified version of the message, warn you of the decision it made, plus provide the metrics it used in the analysis. I don’t know what AOL is using for server-based SPAM filtering. Below is an example of a SpamAssasin report: Content analysis details: (6.3 points, 5.0 required) pts rule name description 2.9 DATE_IN_FUTURE_03_06 Date: is 3 to 6 hours after Received: date 3.4 FORGED_MUA_EUDORA Forged mail pretending to be from Eudora (*) Federal Monitoring - Carnivore and Echelon may have effects in delays, but they should be minimal as they are classified law enforcement tools and should run transparent to the end user (i.e., they don’t exist). - The latest belief is that (hold onto your hat) ALL e-mail is monitored by the federal agencies. I am told there are at least 15 US intelligence agencies. The NSA has the largest computer facilities on this planet and (and federal budget of the 15) and monitors every form of electronic communication. The FBI is trying their best to find terrorists which is fine by me (Google Carnivore). - My belief is that that 911 may have changed the amount of data duplicated (for post data mining purposes), but traffic analysis is probably used much more than keyword locality analysis, stenography detection, and cipher strength detection techniques combined. Carnivore and Echelon would certainly have the capability to spoof timestamps, but there is little reason for it (unless the message is super huge and the network congestion just happens to be very high). YOUR E-MAIL HEADER AS SEEN FROM MY END Return-Path: <[email protected]> Delivered-To: mcpherson.net%[email protected] Received: (cpmta 23380 invoked from network); 16 Aug 2004 09:02:32 -0700 Received: from 140.98.193.10 (HELO ruebert.ieee.org) by smtp.c000.snv.cp.net (209.228.32.87) with SMTP; 16 Aug 2004 09:02:32 -0700 X-Received: 16 Aug 2004 16:02:32 GMT Received: from emstatus.ieee.org (boldfish.ieee.org [140.98.194.25]) by ruebert.ieee.org (Switch-3.1.0/Switch-3.1.0) with ESMTP id i7GG2P7m003877; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:02:25 -0400 (EDT) Received: from engine (engine.ieee.org [140.98.193.23]) by emstatus.ieee.org (8.9.3+Sun/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA06017; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:02:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG by LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8e) with spool id 13508 for [email protected]; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:02:23 -0400 Received: from hormel6.ieee.org (gemini3.ieee.org [140.98.193.188]) by engine.ieee.org (Switch-3.1.2/Switch-3.1.2) with ESMTP id i7GG2MQr015395 for <[email protected]>; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:02:22 -0400 (EDT) Received: from imo-m14.mx.aol.com (imo-m14.mx.aol.com [64.12.138.204]) by hormel6.ieee.org (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i7GG1q1w014862 for <[email protected]>; Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:01:52 -0400 Received: from [email protected] by imo-m14.mx.aol.com (mail_out_v37_r3.4.) id b.1ed.27f171b1 (4426); Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:01:58 -0400 (EDT) From: [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> List-Post: [email protected] Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2004 12:01:58 EDT Subject: Re: Lost messages To: [email protected], [email protected] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="-----------------------------1092672118" X-Mailer: 9.0 for Windows sub 631 X-UCE-Filter-Settings: 90_OPT_OUT X-Scanned-By: IEEE UCE Filtering Service Sender: [email protected] Precedence: list Status: U X-UIDL: QSDamNHkIFdbWgE /// Mike From: [email protected] mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, August 16, 2004 9:02 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: Lost messages Folks, Thanks to those who have replied to my original question. Some of the messages I received suggested that there could be a time delay whereby the original message is received after the reply. Certainly I have noticed this myself in the past, but in this case the original message has not been received after several days. If the sender had sent the message surface mail from the USA to the UK it would have got here sooner! I had a look in my junk mail folder, which did not contain any messages from this forum. So it seems that AOL's spam filter had not decided that the message was offensive or from an unwanted source. Since this is my home account there is no concern that corporate spam filters are cutting in. While it may be that there could be problems transmitting data between the USA and certain other countries, hopefully the UK is not one of them. In addition, AOL is based in the USA and so this should not be a problem unless there is some filtering within the AOL network (and if it is that, then why are replies containing the original mail let through if the original is not?). A continuing mystery, it seems. Regards, Richard Hughes In a message dated 08/16/2004 08:51:39 GMT Standard Time, [email protected] writes: Still now and then a message is getting lost, easy to recover, because most answers on a message include the original question (good habit, opposite to the advice from most list moderators not to include that). ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. 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IEEE PSES Main Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions for use of the list server: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: [email protected] Dave Heald: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
