I apologize in advance if I have violated any norms or rules with this email
After having read the ESMTP RFC(2821) and searching for this problem
on Google, I still don't have an answer.
Suppose one person (Let's call her Alice) wants to send an email to
another (Let's call him Bob).
Now suppose Bob's server is online for 4 hours every day.
According to section 4.5.4.1, Alice's server (or whatever server is
closest to Bob)
should retry sending the mail every half hour or so for 4-5 days,
meaning that Bob will eventually get the mail.
However, experience with Google's Gmail service has showed me that
usually, the server gives up after several seconds.
Is my sample biased or is this the norm, in violation of the RFC?
Moreover, will Bob receive the mail in my example?
Because this would mean that any user who turns his SMTP server on for
a couple of hours each day would receive his mail.
Thank you in advance,
Menachem D. Mostowicz (Gesh)