Re: [amsat-bb] -bb pecking order Issued: 8-15-02 23:40:40Z

[Paul Williamson <kb5mu@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 7:41 PM -0400 8/15/02, Gunther Meisse wrote:
>I wonder what the pecking order is for the AMSAT -bb e-mail re-transmission
>service?

There is no prioritization, so it's effectively more or less FIFO. 
But there is no guarantee of FIFO, either. Each message is added to 
the queue as soon as it is received, and then delivered as quickly as 
possible to each addressee on the list.

John K9IJ gave a good explanation for why you often receive direct 
replies before you see your own message come back.  That is probably 
the main effect you're seeing. Though I must confess I don't know why 
you find it "frustrating" to receive responses before you receive 
your own question back.

It typically takes a bit less than an hour to make a first delivery 
attempt to each address on the list. People who are seeing typical 
delays greater than that, as Paul VP9MU reported, are seeing poor 
network connectivity and/or poor administration at their provider's 
email host. Messages that can't be delivered on the first try are 
retried once per hour for up to five days.

The order for delivery within the list is accidental. It's somewhat 
connected to how recently you subscribed, but the mail server 
scrambles that up by combining deliveries to multiple recipients on 
the same mail host. So, for example, all the aol.com subscribers get 
their copies at about the same time.

Sometimes, the computer is overloaded. That was the case yesterday, 
because one subscriber's provider's email host went crazy and sent us 
about 40,000 error messages as fast as it could. When that happens, 
other email slows down somewhat.

FYI, at the moment there are 1114 email addresses on the AMSAT-BB 
mailing list, plus another 340 addresses on the AMSAT-BB-Digest list. 
A few of those are probably redistribution lists, so the total number 
of subscribers is a bit higher. The ANS and KEPS lists are bigger.

Here's a trick: if you're in a big hurry to get the very latest 
AMSAT-BB messages for some reason, you can check the web archives. 
The 48-hour index is updated as soon as the message is queued. You 
will probably find each message on the 48-hour index a while before 
you receive it by email. Depending on your browser settings (and 
other things) you may need to click Refresh to see the latest.

73  -Paul
kb5mu@amsat.org
AMSAT.ORG mailing list maintenance
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