Historic Email Delivery Times
-
I was just talking about email systems and a thought occurred to me: very few people who did not use the Internet as early as I did (early 1990s) would be aware of the historic design of SMTP systems (email.) Back in the day, email was designed as a "store and forward" system. Emails were sent from one SMTP system to another and often through a chain of SMTP servers looking for the right one. Servers were rarely online in those days and it might be days before two systems were online at the same time. Sending email was a very precarious communications method.
Because of the store and forward nature of SMTP, it was not uncommon for email delivery to take days to travel between different email servers. Even by the mid-1990s delivery times were often hours, not minutes. Sending email was anything but instant.
After around 2003 or so, email delivery started to become so standard and "always online servers" were so common that normal email delivery fell to seconds rather than hours or days. As more and more email servers moved to datacenters rather than hosted on-premises at small companies this improved more and more. Even in 2001 it was not uncommon to find email servers sitting in a small company with nothing but a dial up line attached to it. It might dial up and send email once an hour or so, but being online full time was still not ubiquitous.
Today we often think of email as basically a long form instant messenger. Email delivery is often less than one second from send to relay to reception to display. This has completely changed the perception and use of email is the last decade. But historically the SMTP protocol was not designed to be used in this way and the protocol assumes long delays in delivery and that store and forward mechanisms will be used.
-
Yeah when there is an email hiccup I have to remind my boss of the history of email.
-
Good to have some background on the history...
-
@Dashrender said:
FYI - small type-o in your post "rather than no-premises" should be "rather than on-premises"
Fixed
-
Having run a BBS 1989-1994 it was interesting to see how not only E-Mails but Forum evolved. First versions of WWIV BBS software were isolated, later they started being connected and store in forwarding messages across the country, and in some cases into the Internet at the time...
-
@g.jacobse said:
Having run a BBS 1989-1994 it was interesting to see how not only E-Mails but Forum evolved. First versions of WWIV BBS software were isolated, later they started being connected and store in forwarding messages across the country, and in some cases into the Internet at the time...
You said BBS...music to my ears and it takes me back...:)
-
@garak0410 said:
@g.jacobse said:
Having run a BBS 1989-1994 it was interesting to see how not only E-Mails but Forum evolved. First versions of WWIV BBS software were isolated, later they started being connected and store in forwarding messages across the country, and in some cases into the Internet at the time...
You said BBS...music to my ears and it takes me back...:)
I remember hearing the >click< >modem handshake< and going to see who was on, and even at 2am taking a few minutes to chat with that person. There was a system in the area that had I believe 8 modems, and you could chat with not on the SysOp but one of the other online members.
-
@g.jacobse said:
@garak0410 said:
@g.jacobse said:
Having run a BBS 1989-1994 it was interesting to see how not only E-Mails but Forum evolved. First versions of WWIV BBS software were isolated, later they started being connected and store in forwarding messages across the country, and in some cases into the Internet at the time...
You said BBS...music to my ears and it takes me back...:)
I remember hearing the >click< >modem handshake< and going to see who was on, and even at 2am taking a few minutes to chat with that person. There was a system in the area that had I believe 8 modems, and you could chat with not on the SysOp but one of the other online members.
Yep...did the same...I was on a Commodore 64 with 4 1541 drives and Ivory Joe BBS software...loved to hear the click of the drives at night when someone logged in.
-
You actually used a Commodore 64 as the server? Hard to imagine when that was possible.
