Would an email server in the USA cause email to run slow in the UK?

[shenton]

I've had a great experience of these guys: www.simplymailsolutions.com

They are uk based and will respond straightaway to any queries you have. They host some major companies.

[Walker102]

Thanks Shenton, I'll have a look...

[Walker102]

Originally Posted by soromak

Everything depends on your budget and requirements, for example if you need ActiveSync, to sync contacts, calendars etc. with your mobile devices. Many of the company's discussed at this forum is hosted in Europe, for example Runbox is one of them. If you prefer a company in the UK, then have a look for example at rackspace.co.uk. Probably other users could advice you with more choices.
If you decide to stick with a server at the other side of the pond, then run a free trial of Fastmail and Polarismail, they are both very reliable companies.

Thanks for the pointers Soromak, I'm starting to look at other requirements now like ActiveSync, Webmail Client, Contacts, Calendars, Spam Control.... then see how far the budget will go...

I guess the reliability problems we've had are more to do with the reseller, isp and server load rather than the fact that the server is over the pond in America..

[kijinbear]

Originally Posted by janusz

And don't forget something obvious: the actual speed is determined by the the slowest link. So if your UK offices have slow connections, the server location is irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Walker102

Thanks Janusz....
both our offices are on BT Business Broadband which seems ok for speed with browsing, mp3 downloads, etc.

It would be helpful to double-check this because otherwise you might end up wasting money.

Web browsing and mp3 downloads are downloading, i.e. the data goes from the server to your office. Sending an email with a large attachment is uploading, i.e. the data goes from your office to the server. Many broadband internet services have a large asymmetry between downloading and uploading speeds, because most people want high downloading speeds (to watch HD videos on YouTube) but not many people care about uploading speeds. In extreme cases, uploading can be over 10 times slower than downloading.

If the uploading speed of your broadband connection is too low, you won't be able to send emails any faster no matter which email service you use.

You can go to speedtest.net or broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk to check your downloading and uploading speeds separately.

Note that the speeds are commonly shown in megabits per second, rather than MBs per second, so you should divide the numbers by 8 in order to find out how many MBs you can actually upload per second. For example, if your uploading speed is 1 megabit per second, you can upload 1 / 8 = 0.125 MB per second. If you send a 20MB attachment, the actual amount of data that you need to transmit over the wire is closer to 30MB, so it will take 30 / 0.125 = 240 seconds = 6 minutes. In other words, if your uploading speed is 1 megabit per second, it will be impossible to send a 20MB attachment in less than 6 minutes no matter which email service you use. Likewise, if your uploading speed is 2 megabits per second, it will take at least 3 minutes.

The same problem applies to the transmission of emails between servers. Most servers nowadays are connected to very fast cables, but since they often handle thousands of emails at the same time, the actual speed available to transmit any particular email is usually much lower. It can easily take a couple of minutes for an email with a large attachment to get from one server to another, and there can be multiple servers between you and the recipient.

[Walker102]

The broadband we have is the ADSL type.

I thought it could be good to take note of previous posts and these two drew my attention:
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...8&postcount=44
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...9&postcount=45

Main Thread: http://www.emaildiscussions.com/show...3&highlight=MB

(Maybe the info in this thread is now out of date).

This one's a live link - could be linked to three causes of reliability problems which seem to be in view.

https://www.namecheap.com/support/kn...ail-forwarding

[kijinbear]

Originally Posted by Walker102

The broadband we have is the ADSL type.

The A in ADSL stands for "asymmetric". Your upload speed is most definitely several times lower than your download speed.

If your emails are merely delayed and not returned, I don't think the other threads about attachment size limits would be terribly relevant. When you exceed the attachment size limit, your email is usually returned immediately rather than delayed.

[Walker102]

Thanks Kijinbear, its clear that you and a number of posters have kindly offered trees for me to bark up and that's definitely been of benefit. Perhaps asking questions makes me appear stupid but I don't think it would be a sure sign of that.
Petergh asked me to be specific about the cause of slowness so I clarified that as downloading. That's why I don't think the type of broadband we have is an issue - we have an adequate download speed.
After looking into various aspects, I think we have had a general reliability problem caused by three things - the reseller, isp and server load.
I think the live link in my last post is linked to the reliability of the isp or if not, its just symptomatic of an isp that doesn't specialise in email which I'm sure is what we need going forward...

[FredOnline]

Originally Posted by Walker102

its just symptomatic of an isp that doesn't specialise in email

Are there ISP's that DO?

[Walker102]

Huh, maybe interpretation depends on what school you went to... cats go woof and so on... I've looked up definitions of ISP on Wikipedia etc. but I haven't been able to find what DO means. Is it a tech. acronym...?