Monthly Archives: February 2006

SMTP Transaction Times Worsen

The trend we saw beginning Monday morning continues.  Tuesday is winding down with an unusual 31% increase in SMTP transaction times.  We have seen no unusual reports from our email user base, but continue to look into the root cause and will post more information when we get it.


The purple line shows the profile of a typical Tuesday, hour by hour.  This is defined as the hourly average of the last four Tuesdays.  The columns represent 1-hour averages from today.

Major Monday anomoly


We have monitored a very large increase in SMTP transaction times throughout the day, peaking at 3:00pm CT.  SMTP transaction times for the day are 22% elevated over a typical Monday.  The trend started at exactly  9:00am CT as users returned to their desks from the work week.  No immediate cause is known.