I currently have my Comcast and Gmail forwarded to my Live account though my
Live account. It is very slow to get email this way on my computer through
Outlook. Does anyone else do this? Does anyone else not do this and have
their mail forwarded from their provider to Hotmail, rather than having
Hotmail handle the forward? Questions? Answers? Opinions?

Thank you very much kind people,

MHL

MHL wrote:

I currently have my Comcast and Gmail forwarded to my Live account though my
Live account. It is very slow to get email this way on my computer through
Outlook. Does anyone else do this? Does anyone else not do this and have
their mail forwarded from their provider to Hotmail, rather than having
Hotmail handle the forward? Questions? Answers? Opinions?

How can Outlook be slow? It will poll at the intervals you configured
for each e-mail account defined with it (10 minutes, or longer is
recommended; under 5 minutes is considered abusive). Outlook can only
retrieve e-mails when they actually exist in the mailboxes you have it
query. Whatever you do on the server side has no effect on Outlook or
your bandwidth. So what do you really mean by "slow"?

When you configure a server-side option in your account to forward its
e-mail to elsewhere, you do not get to configure WHEN that forwarding
occurs. It might be immediate. It might get batched up and it will be
forwarded at some interval (which the e-mail provider won't tell you).
When the first mail server (which is NOT a relay) gets the message,
there will be a delay before it actually gets around to forwarding it to
the specified target mail server.

When forwarding, that mail server runs into the same problems it has for
any other mail server. The receiving mail server could be busy so it
rejects connections. The route between the servers could be so flooded
that transfer is too slow which causes timeouts. So the sending mail
server has to retry sending the same message. Could be a route is down
between sending and receiving mail hosts so e-mails cannot be sent until
the routing tables are updated (they really aren't that dynamic) or the
problematic host in the current route becomes responsive again.

You are chaining together the mail servers. That means for N servers in
the chain that every problem that is exerienced by 1 mail server could
be multipled N times. Some users like to use their Gmail account as a
collector for their other accounts because Gmail's spam filtering is
better than at their other e-mail providers. I did that for awhile, too
(except Gmail can incur up to a 1-hour delay when it POPs other
accounts). However, the more mail servers that are involved in the
transfer then the more likely problems will arise. You're also talking
about mail servers that were not specifically designed to be relay
servers.

Also remember that free accounts require you to login. E-mails arriving
into their mailbox are NOT logging into your account to deposit their
e-mails there. Enabling forwarding in an account does NOT login into
that account to perform that action. If you don't log into your freebie
account, eventually it may expire due to being idle too long. You might
get hundreds of e-mails per week through that freebie account but the
traffic doesn't count against the idle time which is measured based on
the last login. If you configure your Gmail account to forward its
e-mails, you are not logging into your Gmail account. That means it
will expire and go dead. Forwarding means the account doing the
forwarding might go dead because it was idle too long (i.e., no logins).

Alas, Hotmail is limited regarding forwarding and retrieving. For free
Hotmail accounts, you can only forward your e-mails to another
Live/Hotmail account. For retrieving, you can add other POP accounts
but all that does is add them to Hotmail's webmail page where you can
click on them to retrieve your e-mails from those other accounts.
Hotmail will not schedule periodic polls of those other accounts (to
keep them alive by having to login to do the POP access). You cannot
use a free Hotmail account to keep alive other freebie accounts.

Gmail does let you POP from other accounts, and that means it has to log
into those accounts, and that means those other accounts will stay
alive. The caveat with using Gmail to POP the other accounts and keep
them alive is that Gmail will slowly increase its poll interval when it
finds no new items to retrieve from those other POP accounts. Gmail
starts out polling at 5-minute intervals. If no new e-mails are found,
Gmail will increment the mail poll interval. Eventually that mail poll
interval will inch up to a maximum of 1 hour until Gmail eventually sees
a new e-mail from the POP'ed account. For example, you might register
at a forum site, they send a confirmation e-mail needed to complete that
registration (by clicking on a URL in that e-mail, but the account you
gave isn't polled by you but instead by Gmail and it could be an hour
before you get that confirmation e-mail for something you want to do
right now. So you could use Gmail to POP the other accounts to keep
them alive but there could be a long delay in delivery from those other
accounts plus you will have configure your local e-mail client to poll
your Gmail account to keep that one alive.

I can see using Gmail as a collector account due to its good spam
filtering. Hotmail uses Microsoft's SmartScreen and Symantec's
Brightmail spam filters which have historically not been as effective as
Gmail's filter. It is unclear if you are trying to meld multiple spam
filters together from multiple e-mail providers or merely using one
account as a collector for multiple accounts (but then why do you need
to do that since your e-mail client can poll all those same accounts)?

Gmail accounts are free so they will expire if left idle too long
(measured from the last login). You never did bother to identify if you
are using free or paid Live/Hotmail accounts.

"MHL" booyakasha at mac dot com wrote in message
...

I currently have my Comcast and Gmail forwarded to my Live account though my
Live account. It is very slow to get email this way on my computer through
Outlook. Does anyone else do this? Does anyone else not do this and have
their mail forwarded from their provider to Hotmail, rather than having
Hotmail handle the forward? Questions? Answers? Opinions?

I'm curious why you do this and not simply access all three mailboxes from
Outlook itself.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

Wow. Ok, let me rephrase this:

Using Window Live to forward mail from other providers is slow.

Is it faster using other providers first to fwd to Windows Live?

Guess it must be...I'll have to try it to see.

Thank you very much, but you read Way too much into this...I'm getting that
a lot lately...hmmm

MHL

VanguardLH" wrote in message
...
MHL wrote:

I currently have my Comcast and Gmail forwarded to my Live account though
my
Live account. It is very slow to get email this way on my computer
through
Outlook. Does anyone else do this? Does anyone else not do this and have
their mail forwarded from their provider to Hotmail, rather than having
Hotmail handle the forward? Questions? Answers? Opinions?

How can Outlook be slow? It will poll at the intervals you configured
for each e-mail account defined with it (10 minutes, or longer is
recommended; under 5 minutes is considered abusive). Outlook can only
retrieve e-mails when they actually exist in the mailboxes you have it
query. Whatever you do on the server side has no effect on Outlook or
your bandwidth. So what do you really mean by "slow"?

When you configure a server-side option in your account to forward its
e-mail to elsewhere, you do not get to configure WHEN that forwarding
occurs. It might be immediate. It might get batched up and it will be
forwarded at some interval (which the e-mail provider won't tell you).
When the first mail server (which is NOT a relay) gets the message,
there will be a delay before it actually gets around to forwarding it to
the specified target mail server.

When forwarding, that mail server runs into the same problems it has for
any other mail server. The receiving mail server could be busy so it
rejects connections. The route between the servers could be so flooded
that transfer is too slow which causes timeouts. So the sending mail
server has to retry sending the same message. Could be a route is down
between sending and receiving mail hosts so e-mails cannot be sent until
the routing tables are updated (they really aren't that dynamic) or the
problematic host in the current route becomes responsive again.

You are chaining together the mail servers. That means for N servers in
the chain that every problem that is exerienced by 1 mail server could
be multipled N times. Some users like to use their Gmail account as a
collector for their other accounts because Gmail's spam filtering is
better than at their other e-mail providers. I did that for awhile, too
(except Gmail can incur up to a 1-hour delay when it POPs other
accounts). However, the more mail servers that are involved in the
transfer then the more likely problems will arise. You're also talking
about mail servers that were not specifically designed to be relay
servers.

Also remember that free accounts require you to login. E-mails arriving
into their mailbox are NOT logging into your account to deposit their
e-mails there. Enabling forwarding in an account does NOT login into
that account to perform that action. If you don't log into your freebie
account, eventually it may expire due to being idle too long. You might
get hundreds of e-mails per week through that freebie account but the
traffic doesn't count against the idle time which is measured based on
the last login. If you configure your Gmail account to forward its
e-mails, you are not logging into your Gmail account. That means it
will expire and go dead. Forwarding means the account doing the
forwarding might go dead because it was idle too long (i.e., no logins).

Alas, Hotmail is limited regarding forwarding and retrieving. For free
Hotmail accounts, you can only forward your e-mails to another
Live/Hotmail account. For retrieving, you can add other POP accounts
but all that does is add them to Hotmail's webmail page where you can
click on them to retrieve your e-mails from those other accounts.
Hotmail will not schedule periodic polls of those other accounts (to
keep them alive by having to login to do the POP access). You cannot
use a free Hotmail account to keep alive other freebie accounts.

Gmail does let you POP from other accounts, and that means it has to log
into those accounts, and that means those other accounts will stay
alive. The caveat with using Gmail to POP the other accounts and keep
them alive is that Gmail will slowly increase its poll interval when it
finds no new items to retrieve from those other POP accounts. Gmail
starts out polling at 5-minute intervals. If no new e-mails are found,
Gmail will increment the mail poll interval. Eventually that mail poll
interval will inch up to a maximum of 1 hour until Gmail eventually sees
a new e-mail from the POP'ed account. For example, you might register
at a forum site, they send a confirmation e-mail needed to complete that
registration (by clicking on a URL in that e-mail, but the account you
gave isn't polled by you but instead by Gmail and it could be an hour
before you get that confirmation e-mail for something you want to do
right now. So you could use Gmail to POP the other accounts to keep
them alive but there could be a long delay in delivery from those other
accounts plus you will have configure your local e-mail client to poll
your Gmail account to keep that one alive.

I can see using Gmail as a collector account due to its good spam
filtering. Hotmail uses Microsoft's SmartScreen and Symantec's
Brightmail spam filters which have historically not been as effective as
Gmail's filter. It is unclear if you are trying to meld multiple spam
filters together from multiple e-mail providers or merely using one
account as a collector for multiple accounts (but then why do you need
to do that since your e-mail client can poll all those same accounts)?

Gmail accounts are free so they will expire if left idle too long
(measured from the last login). You never did bother to identify if you
are using free or paid Live/Hotmail accounts.

Good question, but not the answer I'm looking for.

I did it because I could. I refer you to the original email.

MHL

"Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]" wrote in message
...
"MHL" booyakasha at mac dot com wrote in message
...

I currently have my Comcast and Gmail forwarded to my Live account though
my Live account. It is very slow to get email this way on my computer
through Outlook. Does anyone else do this? Does anyone else not do this
and have their mail forwarded from their provider to Hotmail, rather than
having Hotmail handle the forward? Questions? Answers? Opinions?

I'm curious why you do this and not simply access all three mailboxes from
Outlook itself.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

"MHL" booyakasha at mac dot com wrote in message
...

I did it because I could. I refer you to the original email.

I read the original mail and there's no reasoning in it. What you wish to do
seems less-than-efficient to me and prevents Outlook from being able to
determine the appropriate reply address automatically when you reply.
--
Brian Tillman [MVP-Outlook]

MHL wrote:

Using Window Live to forward mail from other providers is slow.

Don't know if paid accounts are different. For free Hotmail accounts,
you can only forward to other Live/Hotmail domains (i.e., Microsoft
allows you to relay your e-mails inside their mail organization, not
outside of it).

If, in non-Hotmail accounts, you are forwarding their e-mails *to* your
Hotmail account, how long before that forwarding occurs depends entirely
on the sending mail service. Without knowing your actual setup, I'll
make one up as an example.

AccountISP = Your e-mail account at your ISP. Forwards to Hotmail.
AccountHotmail = Your Windows Live Hotmail account

You cannot configure AccountHotmail to forward to AccountISP. It's not
an available option in free Hotmail accounts.

If you configure AccountISP to forward to your AccountHotmail, how long
before a new e-mail that arrives at AccountISP then shows up at
AccountHotmail depends on how fast is the turnaround at AccountISP. It
is likely AccountISP is just a normal e-mail send/receive service and
not specifically an e-mail relaying service. They are designed to
received e-mails that get deposited into a mailbox and sit there waiting
for you to poll that mailbox. Their forwarding feature means they grab
e-mails that are bound for your mailbox and reroute them for sending but
this could get batched up along with perhaps having lower priority. You
would have to discuss with AccountISP how fast is their turnaround for
when they receive an e-mail to when they then later forward it. This
presumes that whomever you can contact at your ISP can actually find out
how their mail servers are configured.

You can look at the Received headers to see:
- The Date field in the e-mail. This is *data* added inside the message
by the sender's e-mail client and may not reflect when they actually
sent that e-mail.
- When the sender's e-mail was accepted by the sender's mail host.
- When your ISP's mail host received that e-mail from the sender's mail
host.
- When the e-mail was received by Hotmail's mail host from your ISP's
mail host.
Then you can tell where the delay in delivery might exist. By tracing
back through the Received headers, in top-down order (your receiving
account back to the sender), you can see what are their timestamps and
through what mail hosts that e-mail got routed.

Is it faster using other providers first to fwd to Windows Live?

You don't have a choice. Free Hotmail accounts will not forward to
"other providers" (i.e., non-Live mail hosts).

other providers --XXXX-- forwarding ---XXXX--- Hotmail

Free Hotmail accounts will only forward to other Live/Hotmail domains.

Hotmail --- forward --- Hotmail

The only forwarding direction you have between "other providers" and
Hotmail is:

other providers --- forward --- Hotmail

Again, look at the Received headers in the e-mail that arrives in your
Hotmail account which got forwarded to there by your other provider.
That will show where are the delays.

Unless the other provider is actually a relaying service (which
immediately forwards e-mails), forwarding performed at an end-point
e-mail service provider will probably incur a delay to batch up those
forwarded e-mails. From a trial back many years ago of an e-mail
provider (name withheld) that I no longer use, they batched up their
forwarded e-mails and sent that batch once per hour. Don't know how
they perform now, though. They weren't designed to be an e-mail
relaying service but rather an end-point service to where you received
and from where you retrieved your e-mails.

Also note that if you reply to forwarded e-mails that you will be
divulging the account from which you send, not the original account from
which you forwarded that e-mail. If you have AccountISP forward your
e-mails to AccountHotmail, your Hotmail account is shown in the headers
when you reply to that e-mail, not your AccountISP. So the senders will
see that they sent to one domain but replies come from a different
domain. Due to e-mail phishing and spoofing, those senders may not
trust your replies. They sent to but got a reply
from . Do those senders who know you at your
e-mail identity at your ISP also know your e-mail identity at Hotmail?
You can try to lie by setting the From (and Reply-To) fields in your
e-mail client to point at your ISP's account but the headers in your
sent e-mail will show that it instead came from your Hotmail account.
If you sent e-mail to but got a response from
, would you trust that reply?

Forwarding is not the same as relaying. The forwarded e-mail will show
the headers added by the sender's mail host and the forwarding mail
host's headers. If you ever forward that forwarded e-mail, like when
replying to a sender but adding the original e-mail as an attachment,
those recipients can see you are forwarding e-mails through your ISP to
your Hotmail account (and wonder why you are hiding behind a forwarding
service). Relaying services don't modify the headers. They are
transparent. So the e-mail you receive in your Hotmail account would
never show that it went through the relaying service. ISPs and e-mail
providers may provide a forwarding service but they are not a relaying
service. Some relaying services will modify the headers so any replies
you make to those relayed e-mails will go back through the relaying
service. The relaying service replaces the headers with their own, so
the sender that sent you an e-mail at the relay domain will get a reply
from you that is also showing it came from that relay domain. The
sender won't alert that the sent one place but got a reply from
somewhere else.