Thanks to everyone who responded to my query. The responses helped to clarify various things for me. Unfortunatley it seems that I can't extract sufficiently specific information to point to a particular problem. I'd like to ask another question: Is there a way (apart from starting up my own manual SMTP session) of testing the responsiveness of a remote mail server? I'd want to do this from a UK-located source. I found such a service at http://www.mxtoolbox.com/ which actually probes the MX host for a given domain, and returns some performance indicators, but I think this operates from the US. To be specific: I want to check whether there are general problems connecting to otago.ac.nz, and I suspect there may be internet connection difficulties between the UK and New Zealand. I think connections from the US are probably better. I want to delegate this to another agent, to eliminate the possibility that there may be s problem arising from my own IP/domain. With thanks, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 15-Nov-07 Time: 19:47:33 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------