Re: [tlug] slow mailing list posts

[Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com>]

On 11/12/05, Lyle (Hiroshi) Saxon <ronfaxon@example.com> wrote:

> At least 10 different servers?  Just to get across town?  Is this
> normal?  I know that e-mail goes from server to server, but why so many
> right within the same city?

Well, first of all, remember that you live in the second largest
"town" in the world (or largest, if you count Yokohama and Chiba as
being part of Tokyo, which many people seem to, but I think is a bit
of a stretch). :)

It all depends on your ISP and how they have mail configured, and how
they connect to other ISPs, and which backbones their mail flows
across to get to TLUG's ISP, and so on. You have to remember that the
path packets take across Tokyo on the wire can be radically different
than the path you might take in the physical world. It is possible, in
fact, for packets travelling from a Yahoo!BB user in Shinjuku to a
Bflets user in Shibuya to get routed through Reston, Virginia. Not
likely, but something like that has happened, when a ship cut an
important fibre trunk between Japan and Australia. I cannot find the
exact details, but Google probably can, if you are willing to spend
more than the 30 seconds I just allocated to trying to dig it up. :)

Cheers,
Josh