users@javamail.java.net

Re: Strange behaviour of javaMail in Windows XP and Norton Antivirus

From: martijn.list <martijn.list_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2010 21:25:13 +0100

> But when I activate the "2010 Norton Internet Security" the behaviour
> changes, where with the same lengthen or small emails, the
> t.sendMessage() is no more synchronous and it returns in a fast way. My
> test flow of about 30 messages is very fast executed. During this loop,
> the Wireshark spy show that only the email headers for 30 emails are
> sent to the smtp server. It is only when I "close" the transport
> connection that all the "30 body email contents" are flushed from the XP
> to the smtp server. I could check later in my receiver thunderbird that
> I could found all emails.

My experience in the past (a couple of years ago) is that virus scanners
act as a SMTP 'man in the middle'. The email sent from an email client
is not directly sent to the external SMTP server. The message is
intercepted first then scanned and then forwarded to the real SMTP
server. What could happen in your case is that the email is received
locally by Norton. Because this happens locally, it's much faster than
sending it to the remote SMTP. Norton then scans the message and sends
the message to the remote SMTP. This will take some time, roughly the
same time it takes to send an email when Norton is disabled. I'm not
sure whether this is what happens in your case but most virus scanner
work this way.

Kind regards,

Martijn Brinkers