Why are email messages are sending slowly

[Caz M]

I have noticed that lately emails with attachments seem to take a VERY long
time to leave my out box in both Outlook and Yahoo. This is irrelevant of
the size of the attachment. The last one I sent was through Outlook and was
4.77MB. It took 3 minutes to leave my out box?

 

[Joe Grover]

What is the speed of your internet connection? 3 minutes for an
approximately 5MB email isn't unheard of if your upload speed isn't that
great (which--if you're on a home connection that is half-duplex such as
cable or DSL--is usually the case). For example if your upload speed is
256kbit, you'd be uploading at about 20-25kbytes/sec. A 5MB file would take
just over 3 minutes to send at this speed. You can go to www.speedtest.net
and run some tests to show you your current upload/download speeds.

Also, do you have antivirus software that integrates with your email
program? Most products do, and are configured by default to scan all
incoming and outgoing messages. Try disabling this feature and see if your
problem persists.

Joe