Email Timeouts or No Pony Express over the Sierras!

[strannik]

Greetings,

My email has been incredibly slow for the last month or so.
In particular, I am only able to login 1 time out of 7 successfully,
and I don't stay in long before I am getting kicked out. When I am
in, things can go fast or slow on a rather random basis, although
usually slow during business hours, when I need speed.

The problems are basically the same, regardless of whether I use
Thunderbird, Outlook, other clients, or webmail such as Horde,
or sugarCRM email.

I called Bluehost Tech Support repeatedly, and have had a variety
of anwers given. A few times, I was told an update script needed
to be run, and this did seem to help for about half an
hour. Most recently (after escalating a ticket), I was
told that there were simply too many slow hops between my ISP
(Yahoo/AT&T/SBCGLOBAL,etc. DSL) and Bluehost, and that I would have
to have the situation resolved by the ISP.

There certainly seem to be several slow hops as you can see:


1 * * * Request timed out.
2 * * * Request timed out. (note: this doesn't always happen)
3 44 ms 42 ms 48 ms ge-5-2-ur03.sanjose.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.86.1
42.41]
4 72 ms 49 ms 50 ms pos-0-4-0-0-ar01.sfsutro.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68
.86.90.158]
5 46 ms 68 ms 45 ms COMCAST-IP.edge1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.79.43.13
4]
6 45 ms 88 ms 44 ms xe-11-1-0.edge1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.79.43.133
]
7 60 ms 50 ms 45 ms ge-1-1-0-79.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.18.66
]
8 47 ms 44 ms 45 ms so-14-0.hsa4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.114.158]

9 67 ms 55 ms 80 ms INTEGRA-TEL.hsa4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.79.60.34
]
10 70 ms 66 ms 96 ms tg9-4.cr02.sntdcabl.integra.net [209.63.115.129]

11 77 ms 74 ms 88 ms tg13-1.cr02.rcrdcauu.integra.net [209.63.114.169
]
12 140 ms 193 ms 216 ms p4-0-0.cr02.slkcutxd.integra.net [209.63.114.9]

13 121 ms 81 ms 119 ms tg13-1.ar10.slkcutxd.integra.net [209.63.114.250
]
14 170 ms 119 ms 74 ms gw0-cust-bluehost-com.slkc.eli.net [70.97.59.22]

15 134 ms 85 ms 99 ms box71.bluehost.com [69.89.21.71]

The ISPs response was to tell me that the only way to shorten the
number of hops out of the AT&T network, is to move from a dynamic
IP to a static IP for $65 addtional per month. I am on a limited
IT budget, so this is not an option right now.

I have had bluehost since 2006, with few problems until now, so I
am hoping that someone out there will have some suggestions on how
to solve this problem other than throwing money at it, setting up
my own mailserver or using gmail (which I guess I will do if there
is no other solution). Barring that, seeing if there is a closer
cpanel host.

Any insights? Suggestions?

Thanks,

John Simmons
strannik@strannik.com

[Early Out]

The "slow hops" explanation is a red herring. That tracert shows a path that may not be optimal, but it's not nearly bad enough to explain the problems you're seeing. You're ultimately getting to BH in about 125ms, which is plenty fast enough. From cross-country, I usually get there in about 80ms. Things don't fall apart until you start running into round-trip times over maybe 400ms. Even then, POP email timeouts shouldn't happen.

(By the way, those timeouts at the first two hops are not an indication of any problem - some nodes are programmed not to respond to tracert requests, and those often occur at the head end of your local node, where you connect to your ISP's network.)

I haven't seen anything remotely like those kinds of problems with email connections. First thing to try - are you using a router? Try connecting directly to your cable modem (if that's what you're on), and see if the problem clears up. Second thing to try - do you have a firewall? Try enabling only the built-in WinXP firewall, and disable whatever third-party firewall you're using (you may have to reboot to truly disable it). Third, are you using a security package that has some sort of "privacy protection" in it? If so, kill it.

There's a possibility that BH has a problem on box71, and they just haven't figured out what it is, yet. You may just have to keep bugging them.

[strannik]

Well, now it appears that the same problem appears whether I am on my home network, the local coffeehouse network or another machine on another network, so probably it is the latter - a problem with box71. We'll see what the next "creative" answer is the next time I call bluehost. Thanks for your reply.

[strannik]

Ironically, the day after I posted the above, the problem went away, and stayed away for several weeks, but now it is back - I can not get through the simplest of email sessions without timeouts. This is the same from several different locations and computers, and does not matter whether or not I am using a mail client or the web interface. Is it possible that the machine is just overloaded?