Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!giza.cis.ohio-state.edu!karl From: karl@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: real sloooww local mail with internet link down Message-ID: Date: 9 Jun 89 02:20:44 GMT References: <3798@phri.UUCP> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Organization: OSU Lines: 24 In-reply-to: roy@phri.UUCP's message of 8 Jun 89 21:23:51 GMT roy@phri.UUCP writes: Whenever our link to the outside world goes down, local mail gets real slow (like messages spending over 30 minutes to an hour in the sendmail queue). ... Can somebody give me some hints as to what might be happening and how to prevent it? What is probably happening is that your mailer is timing out on every single request made of your nameserver, because your nameserver is occupied with timing out in attempts to do things like check with primaries for status of its secondary zone dumps. While the nameserver is so occupied, it won't pay any attention to ordinary requests from the mailer. The solution to your problem is probably to install the asynchronous zone transfer stuff that has been discussed from time to time; probably your best bet is to bring up UToronto's modified BIND, which has all the good bug fixes + async zone xfer + a few bazillion other neat features. (I haven't brought it up yet myself, but our connection to the outside world has been so stable that it is only in the most rare circumstances that I have anything to worry about.) --Karl