Send/Receive timing

[Jo]

I have a LOT of different email addresses that I use in Outlook 2003. I've
long been plagued with problems where an email address will time out before
it can determine if there is email to download from the mail server. (Usually
there isn't, so it's like it's trying to download a really big email.) My ISP
insists it's not a problem on their end.

I'm beginning to wonder if it might be due to the large number of emails
being checked at any one time (15 POP3 plus sometimes one IMAP account). I
have email for many different reasons, and I want to be able to access email
from all of them (or at least most of them) when I'm on the computer, so
dividing them up into different Windows login accounts isn't a good
alternative. And I don't want to have to check manually all the time either.

I'm thinking this might be solved if I was to divide up these accounts into,
say, 2 different Send/Receive groups -- both of them look for email every 10
minutes, but each is staggered 5 minutes apart. Group 1 checks at startup;
group 2 checks 5 minutes after that; group 1 checks again 5 minutes after
that, etc. I know how to set Outlook to check for email every 10 minutes
(which is what I have it set to now), but not how to tell it when to start
checking after Outlook starts up.

Does anyone know if there's a way to tell Outlook to delay Group 2's
send/receive by 5 minutes after it first starts up, so that it will always be
5 minutes behind Group 1? (Does that make sense?)

Failing that, does anyone have any other suggestions about this?

Thanks.

 

[VanguardLH]

I have a LOT of different email addresses that I use in Outlook 2003. I've
long been plagued with problems where an email address will time out before
it can determine if there is email to download from the mail server. (Usually
there isn't, so it's like it's trying to download a really big email.) My ISP
insists it's not a problem on their end.

I'm beginning to wonder if it might be due to the large number of emails
being checked at any one time (15 POP3 plus sometimes one IMAP account). I
have email for many different reasons, and I want to be able to access email
from all of them (or at least most of them) when I'm on the computer, so
dividing them up into different Windows login accounts isn't a good
alternative. And I don't want to have to check manually all the time either.

I'm thinking this might be solved if I was to divide up these accounts into,
say, 2 different Send/Receive groups -- both of them look for email every 10
minutes, but each is staggered 5 minutes apart. Group 1 checks at startup;
group 2 checks 5 minutes after that; group 1 checks again 5 minutes after
that, etc. I know how to set Outlook to check for email every 10 minutes
(which is what I have it set to now), but not how to tell it when to start
checking after Outlook starts up.

Does anyone know if there's a way to tell Outlook to delay Group 2's
send/receive by 5 minutes after it first starts up, so that it will always be
5 minutes behind Group 1? (Does that make sense?)

Failing that, does anyone have any other suggestions about this?

Thanks.

More likely there may be anti-spam or anti-abuse quotas at your e-mail
provider that limits the maximum number of concurrent mail sessions from
the same IP or the number of mail sessions per minute from the same IP.
If you have, say, 10 e-mail accounts at the same e-mail provider, you
could be trying to establish 10 mail sessions for different accounts but
from your same IP address, and they may only permit 1 or 2 concurrent
mail sessions from the same IP address.

If you are going to establish separate groups to perform mail polls for
different sets of e-mail accounts, it would be better to use prime
numbers for the mail poll intervals, like 11 minutes for one group and
17 minutes for the lesser important group of accounts. That way you
would have less overlapping mail polls. After all, if you set both to
10 minutes, both would poll at the same 10-minute interval after you
start Outlook. If you set on to 10 minutes and the other to 15, they
would overlap every 60 minutes (1 hour). If one was at 11 minutes and
the other at 17 minutes, they would overlap every 187 minutes (~3
hours), so for a minor change in the mail poll interval you get a much
longer interval before both would poll at the same time.

 

[Jo]

Vanguard, you're brilliant! Thank you. You may be right about the limit on
email polls. It sounds very plausible, especially since about half of these
emails are coming from my web domain, which is being pulled from a different
webhost's servers, so the total number would be much more than my connection
IP would be prepared to juggle. I will try your idea. There are some emails
that I certainly don't have to check as frequently as others, and your idea
of prime numbers is brilliant. Thanks again!