E-mail notification (or not...)

[Tony474]

I've noticed that since the software change I haven't been receiving e-mail notifications of new replies to threads to which I've contributed. Well, actually, just one, but that was many hours late. I've checked my setting in the user CP (i.e. instant notification) and it hasn't changed. This isn't the end of the world but it's seemingly not functioning as it should. Any one else experiencing this and what, if anything, can be done to fix it?

[Big John]

This happens to me with some but not all threads funnily enough but it has been happening since before the upgrade.

[Tony474]

Oddly, in the last hour or so the notifications have been coming in again - but many at a time, some delayed by several hours and others recent. Maybe it's a mail server problem at one end or the other.

[TDPRI]

There are so many thousands of these sent per hour that we parcel them out over a day so as to not swamp the mail server. It could be delayed 15 mins or 5 hours depending on the load that day. It's always been that way, and there was nothing in the "new version" that had any impact on that. But, as everyone knows we did go through 3 or 4 days of server problems and I wouldn't doubt that this effected the mailing of notices.

[Tony474]

Ah, thanks for that, Paul. That goes towards explaining what happened. Mind you, at least one notification was delayed nearly 17 hours, which is a bit unusual.

[Tony474]

Further to my previous post, I'm still a bit concerned that notifications seem to be arriving out of order - some are delayed by well over 48 hours while others far less. As far as I can remember this didn't happen before. It isn't the end of the world but it makes life just that bit less straightforward.

Edit - I see that this is my 2,000th post, making me a "Friend of Leo's". That's nice and it's appreciated, but I'm sorry it was over something of a gripe.

[TDPRI]

What order are they in?

I don't doubt that they are not arriving the same as you received them before, but I have no idea why, no control over the process and no other complaints about the problem. So, I'm pretty much unable to respond to you on this issue.

Sorry about that.

[Tony474]

That's the thing - any old order, with no observable pattern. Oh, well, just have to live with it, I suppose. In fact, my system's set up to send and receive e-mails every 15 minutes; notification of the above post and another from the financial thread arrived immediately. To judge from the "sent" and "received" timings, I'm guessing a mail-server glitch is or was at the heart of the problem. If no-one else has mentioned anything about this sort of thing, the fault may well be with my e-mail service provider. But thanks again for taking the time to look into the matter.