Latest shenanigans with rcn

[Steven W. Orr]

On Tuesday, Sep 5th 2006 at 15:57 -0400, quoth Mark E. Mallett:

=>On Tue, Sep 05, 2006 at 11:06:58AM -0400, Steven W. Orr wrote:
=>> 
=>> I am routing all the email that I send that will not be accepted from my 
=>> server through RCN's smtp server. So yes, the 400 series code is coming
=>> from RCN. RCN has no limit on the number of messages per day that are 
=>> being sent. What I am experiencing is that there seems to be a delay of 
=>> around 15 or 20 minutes resulting from a 400 series code. (400 means "not 
=>> now. try again later.) The actual text that I get back from RCN is "Too 
=>> many connections".
=>
=>"too many connections" is probably different from "too many messages"
=>and it probably means what it says, I would think.  i.e. that there are 
=>too many connections to the SMTP port and the server is not accepting more
=>at the moment.  What it doesn't say is whether it's too many connections
=>from you personally, or too many connections overall.
=>
=>Are you running mail software that will gleefully open up lots of
=>simultaneous connections to the same host (e.g., like qmail does)?  If
=>so, maybe that's it; if not, then maybe they are just bogged down with
=>lots of connections from different sources.  The fact that it's Tuesday
=>(often a high spam day) after a holiday weekend (often a high demand
=>day) might figure in there somewhere.
=>
=>Anyway... I think we can expect mail rate-limiting and rate-monitoring
=>to become more prevalent as providers try harder to get a handle on
=>preventing outgoing abuse, not just on blocking incoming badstuff.

Excellent observation. You might be right and it's something I hadn't 
considered. I'll look into it. Thanks.