Computing HelpDesk

8-Hour Timeout for Email Delivery Retries

If your JMU e-mail account is nearing its quota, incoming messages that would put your account over quota will not be delivered to you. In this case, you will receive the following message from the system with the subject line: "JMU E-mail System: Some message(s) not delivered" instructing you to clear out unneeded messages to make room for the new ones. The system will repeatedly try to deliver the message to you for 8 hours. If, after 8 hours, the message still cannot be delivered, it will be returned to the sender with an informational message stating why it could not be delivered.

There are 2 reasons we have limited the delivery attempts to 8 hours:

1. At any given time, the JMU e-mail system has hundreds or thousands of messages queued for delivery. Increasing the delivery time beyond 8 hours has shown in the past to have a significant and detrimental effect on the e-mail system's performance.
2. If someone sends an e-mail, possibly an urgent e-mail, and receives no acknowledgement of its receipt, the sender may incorrectly assume it has been read when, in fact, it has not. When a message cannot be delivered and is returned to the sender after an 8-hour period, the sender is notified the message was not successfully delivered, and may be prompted to contact the recipient through another means.

For additional information, please see:
http://www.jmu.edu/computing/helpdesk/selfhelp/webmailfaq.shtml#quota