Outgoing Email Very Slow (SOLVED!)

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John Liebson
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Outgoing Email Very Slow (SOLVED!)

Post by John Liebson »

Windows 11, 21H2 (OS Build 23000.348) Thunderbird 91.3.2 (32-bit)

Problem started a few weeks ago. One example: I just sent an email that is just slightly longer than what can show on the monitor without scrolling; this took a full minute. I did not notice when the progress bar started to show 100%, but surely longer than the first thirty seconds. With the exception of a small .jpg (7 Kb) image of the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Amherst College in 1821, the message was entirely text.

Is the problem likely to be with Tb, or with Centurylink.com, or even both? Certainly not with our WiFi, which is showing the speed to be 1.2Gbps. Asking Centurylink for email tech support is not very helpful in general, but if the advice offered here is to contact them, I shall.

Had not thought to try Troubleshooting mode; just did so, bar showed 100% around 30 seconds, transmission took one minute.
Last edited by John Liebson on December 7th, 2021, 3:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by tanstaafl »

I assume you're using a IMAP account. Try copying the message to a folder in the "Local Folders" special account and then scroll the local copy. If its slow then the problem is probably with Thunderbird (or its environment). If its normal then you might have been running into either a problem with your Internet connection (between the router and the server) or the IMAP server.

If you have other accounts, does the problem occur with them too?

I don't have any experience with Windows 11 and have only noticed a few other posts mentioning it, so I have no idea if you're running into some sort of windows driver related problem or not.

Try unchecking "use hardware acceleration when available" in tools -> preferences and restarting Thunderbird. It sometimes causes performance problems even with a fast graphics card.

It can be very useful to also have a Gmail IMAP account when you want to troubleshoot something. If the problem doesn't occur with Gmail then you know its account specific. Gmail is also popular enough anybody trying to help you frequently knows how it behaves etc.
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

tanstaafl wrote:I assume you're using a IMAP account. Try copying the message to a folder in the "Local Folders" special account and then scroll the local copy. If its slow then the problem is probably with Thunderbird (or its environment). If its normal then you might have been running into either a problem with your Internet connection (between the router and the server) or the IMAP server.

If you have other accounts, does the problem occur with them too?

I don't have any experience with Windows 11 and have only noticed a few other posts mentioning it, so I have no idea if you're running into some sort of windows driver related problem or not.

Try unchecking "use hardware acceleration when available" in tools -> preferences and restarting Thunderbird. It sometimes causes performance problems even with a fast graphics card.

It can be very useful to also have a Gmail IMAP account when you want to troubleshoot something. If the problem doesn't occur with Gmail then you know its account specific. Gmail is also popular enough anybody trying to help you frequently knows how it behaves etc.
1. Centurylink account is POP.

2. Turned off hardware acceleration, no change.

3. Copied sent letter than took a minute using CLink into a Gmail Imap account message, using my Clink address to receive it, which was sent in about two seconds, and received almost instantly. If the problem is between the router and the internet, it is only with smtp.centurylink.net. I wonder if there is a method of installing a new copy of that?

4. I rather doubt that there is a driver problem, given that a. the email delay only started a few weeks ago, and b. I don't see any other problems with any other programs; that does not mean that there are no such, only that if they exist, I've not noticed them.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by tanstaafl »

This is confusing. I wouldn't expect you to have scrolling problems with a POP account in safe mode (help -> troubleshoot mode) unless it was due to something that would effect other applications. Any messages you read in a POP account have already been downloaded so networking and server problems should be irrelevant. Safe mode disables hardware acceleration , the Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler and all extensions, and ignores any (of the optional) userChrome.css and userContent.css files

It should only make a small difference but why are you using a 32-bit version of Thunderbird on a Windows 11 PC? It requires a 64-bit CPU.

Do you have any problems scrolling messages in the Gmail IMAP account? That's fetching portions of a message stored on a remote folder on the IMAP server and temporarily storing it just in memory (not on your hard disk) every time you open it. Lot more overhead/latency than reading a downloaded message in a POP account.

See if http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_-_Thunderbird or http://kb.mozillazine.org/Toolbar_or_wi ... ot_working gives you any ideas.
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

tanstaafl wrote:This is confusing. I wouldn't expect you to have scrolling problems with a POP account in safe mode (help -> troubleshoot mode) unless it was due to something that would effect other applications. Any messages you read in a POP account have already been downloaded so networking and server problems should be irrelevant. Safe mode disables hardware acceleration , the Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler and all extensions, and ignores any (of the optional) userChrome.css and userContent.css files

It should only make a small difference but why are you using a 32-bit version of Thunderbird on a Windows 11 PC? It requires a 64-bit CPU.

Do you have any problems scrolling messages in the Gmail IMAP account? That's fetching portions of a message stored on a remote folder on the IMAP server and temporarily storing it just in memory (not on your hard disk) every time you open it. Lot more overhead/latency than reading a downloaded message in a POP account.

See if http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_-_Thunderbird or http://kb.mozillazine.org/Toolbar_or_wi ... ot_working gives you any ideas.
Scrolling? I am asking about very slow delivery of email, nothing to do with scrolling.

I am using a 32-bit version of Tb, as I have for well over five years with no problem on two 64-bit CPUs. However, you may be on to something to do with slow email delivery; perhaps it is caused by a recent update to Windows 11, so it worthwhile to transfer to a 64-bit version of Tb, to see if that fixes the problem.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by tanstaafl »

Okay. I got confused by your first post.

Do you have a performance problem sending email using the Gmail account?
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

tanstaafl wrote:Okay. I got confused by your first post.

Do you have a performance problem sending email using the Gmail account?
Entry #3 in the third message in this thread, which you can find by scrolling, states that the message that takes a minute to send via centurylink.net takes two seconds via Gmail (IMAP).

The reference in the first message refers specifically to the size of the message on the monitor, not to the long time it takes to transmit it.
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tanstaafl
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by tanstaafl »

So far it sounds like a problem with CenturyLinks SMTP server. The main downside of Gmail's SMTP server is it will save a copy of a sent message in your Gmail "Sent Mail" folder (this is independent of the Thunderbird copies & folders settings which could create a second copy) and you need to register in Gmail webmail any other From: addresses you want to use with it (otherwise it automatically replaces the From: address with the Gmail accounts email address).

I suggest you think about re-configuring the CenturyLink account to use the Gmail SMTP server. You could create a saved search folder (a type of virtual folder that doesn't effect where the mail is physically stored) in the CenturyLink account that shows the merged contents of the CenturyLink and Gmail sent folders.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Saved_Search
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

Before doing that, I want to move to the 64-bit version, so a quick question: I understand that Tb (and Fx) installers now go to any existing directories, so all I need to do is to download and run the 64-bit installer, which will automatically use my existing profiles. Is that correct?

Given the number of various problems I have had recently, I just don't want to create another one by my own actions, thus my query.
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

I pinged smtp.centurylink.net, which returned a round-trip average speed of 47ms. and a ping of smtp.gmail.com returned an average speed of 41ms; neither had any loss. Is this any indication of anything meaningful?
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tanstaafl
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by tanstaafl »

I suggest you install it in the existing installation directory to avoid problems due to the "dedicated profile per installation" feature (which will complain that your profile doesn't support that version). Don't worry about the conventions of what directories are used for 32 and 64 bit programs.

The ping round trip speed doesn't mean anything. If it said it lost packets it would.
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

1. Traceroute from TP-Link Archer AX50 router:

traceroute to smtp.centurylink.net (206.152.134.66), 20 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.905 ms 0.788 ms 0.617 ms
2 albq-dsl-gw48.albq.qwest.net (67.42.200.48) 21.187 ms 21.303 ms 21.316 ms
3 67-42-136-73.albq.qwest.net (67.42.136.73) 70.402 ms 21.535 ms 20.841 ms
4 ftw-edge-02.inet.qwest.net (67.14.54.174) 45.396 ms 45.350 ms 53.623 ms
5 216.34.172.42 (216.34.172.42) 45.929 ms 44.929 ms 45.510 ms
6 das1-v3005.dl2.savvis.net (216.34.164.50) 45.518 ms 46.062 ms das1-v3006.dl2.savvis.net (216.34.164.54) 45.388 ms
7 206.152.132.146 (206.152.132.146) 45.441 ms 45.693 ms 45.360 ms

There were only seven links. I have no idea if this data is good or otherwise.

2. Rebooted router, no change.

3. Suspended Comodo Firewall, no change.

4. Turned off Windows Defender, no change.

5. Turned off Malwarebytes, no change.

6. Turned off SuperAntiSpyware, no change.

Next?
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

Granted that I have no understanding of this problem, I now have what ever `less than no understanding' might be called.

Why is that?

I just sent a message to myself from my wife's computer, which uses Tb and the same WiFi system as my computer, and it took about as long to send that message as sending from my computer does. Does this provide any new clues as to where the problem lies?
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

To try to further isolate the problem, I disconnected the Ethernet cable from the DSL modem to the WiFi router and plugged it into the computer. I tried twice to send a simple email message to myself, and each time, after about fifteen seconds, I cancelled them as showing no improvement.

Reconnected the router and checked for new email; I was confounded to receive my two supposedly cancelled emails, neither of which is in the Tb Sent folder.

Is there any meaning attached to this?
John Liebson
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Re: Outgoing Email Very Slow

Post by John Liebson »

Solved!

You have three guesses as to what was causing the problem, and your first nth guesses don't count.

1. I was testing the use of WiFi, so I turned it off on my computer, sent a message from the other, which did not help. Turned it back on, turned it off on wife's machine, sent a message from mine, which worked instantly.

2. Turned WiFi back on on the other computer, making sure to choose TP-Link_13E0, not TP-Link_13E0_5G. which it cannot use. That caused me to remember at least part of a recent problem, and I must have selected the _5G WiFi setting improperly when connecting that machine to our WiFi system.

Why I decided to try turning WiFi off I don't really know, although it seemed to be about the only variable with which I had not done any thing.

Now, if I can get PJ, my better 2/3rds, to finish cleaning up her computer so that I can finally transfer what is then on it to my previous and much better computer for her to use, on which I had installed a _5G WiFi-capable card and let her use that without causing the problem that I finally eliminated.
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