Slow Delivery of Email

[MagnumVP]

I have an Exchange 2003 server used for Internal and External Email. For some reason over the past week the email has been extremely slow to be delivered to internal users.

Normally when an internal user sends an email to another internal use it takes less that 30 seconds to popup in that users inbox. Recently it has been taking 30 minutes to hours to be delivered.

When I open the Queues of the Server I see over 2000 messages sitting in the "Messages Pending Submission". When I "Find Messages" on that location I see A LOT of messages that are being sent to SPAM address. I have checked and have verfied from 3rd party that the server is not a SMTP Relay.

I also see a lot of message being sent to postmaster@domain.com why is that.

Anybody have any thoughts or methods to determine why the messages are just sitting there?

 

[Robroy2003]

Are you really sure you are not an open relay. With that many emails in the queue it makes you wonder. Anyway, if you shut down all your exchange services and delete the messages in the \Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mailroot\vsi 1\Queue
and in the badmail folder at the same time. ANY MAIL THAT HAS NOT BEEN DELIVERED WILL BE DELETED. This will also, clear out your Queue's. Can you perform a directopry listing on the queue folder and tell us how many messages are in there?

Mark Spencer

 

[MagnumVP]

I'm sure I'm not a relay check out the telnet session:

220 somewhere.com Sat, 23 Oct 2004 09:14:09 -0700
helo
250 somewhere.com Hello
mail from:MagnumVP@somewhere.com (Used Actual User Internal Email Address)
250 2.1.0 MagnumVP@somewhere.com ....Sender OK
rcpt toeterparker@hotmail.com
550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for peterparker@hotmail.com
data
554 5.5.2 No valid recipients

There are currently no messages in the queus because I removed them all.

I waited 24 hours prior to submitting this message and there were no message in there currently. It might have just been a "glitch" in the system and it fixed itself. Then again, my work is closed on Saturdays so no messages are going out to test the theory.

I'll let you know if anything "wierd" happens on Monday.