I have been on all search engines with no luck finding answer. I know this will vary from site to site. In general how fast does email travel from point A to point B ? Please explain for dummy to understand. I have been writing direct to girl in Russia.I am in U.S. Seems to be a several day delay. Is Russian email censored ?

Well as e-mail is transmitted to the internet as electricity, it travels close to the speed of light, but then we get network congestion and various other bottlenecks so the speed is a lot slower.
It all really depends on Bandwidth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth).
I think the record currently stands at around 150 gigabits per second. Let's break this down so you can better understand this. That's the equivalent to downloading 130 DVD movies in one minute.

This doesn't really answer your question, but I hope it helps a little

Ok Bad Luck. I got that. Still interested in censorship of email in Russia. Do they do it ? If so why and how ?

To answer the Why? Part…..

In communist countries, government is a huge part and they control everything. That is the basis of a communist society. That is what China does. I don't know about Russia but if they do, that is the why.

HI,
Your answer of "the speed of light" is a good one. It travels as fast as speaking on a telephone.
But, different emails have different Internet Service Providers, where the email goes through before it gets to who it's been sent to.
TV Network News programs have reported that people in China, can get into very serious trouble sending and receiving certain emails. There emails are looked at by Officials before they are actually sent anywhere.
Your emails to Russia could very well be looked at by some Official before they are actually sent to the person you are emailing.
I do wish you the best.

Since Russia is no longer communist I doubt your email is getting monitored. If they wanted to they would set up filters on the mail servers of your Internet service provider.

To understand how email works read the content in this website:
http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/20how.htm

There emails are looked at by Officials before they are actually sent anywhere.
Your emails to Russia could very well be looked at by some Official before they are actually sent to the person you are emailing.


I can just picture thousands of Russians and Chinese sitting in front of computer terminals reading e-mails. What a load of crap.

If there is any monitoring of e-mail its done electronicly, scanning mail servers for certain key words or phrases. Then and only then, might an official look at that mail.

Russia is a much freer society now. The only way to effectively control e-mail is to control the e-mail servers. This means controlling access to the Internet. In China, there is some control over how a person can access the Net. I don't believe that exists in Russia.

As for the speed of e-mail. The speed can only be measured from server to server. Once an e-mail is delivered to an outgoing mail server, the trransmission to incoming mail server of the recipient is almost instantaneous. From there, there might be a delay as the mail is processed through anti-spam filters, but it should be milliseconds before it gets placed in the recipients mailbox. From there, it depends on when the recipient polls his mailbox. That could be a few minutes or a few days.

I just sent my other computer an e-mail, I got up, walked to the other room and checked the e-mail, the e-mail I sent was there. If you have to have faster service than that you have a problem.

Very good answer!! I do not know about China. But I have done very much research, study on Russia. Russian Government as well as their economy is so unstable and poor, I can not see a lot of worry about email. They have MANY more problems to deal with.

Hey letmet,whas your problem? DUH!! I know that!! My question was regarding international email to Russia from U.S.. LIGHTEN UP!!

Very good answer!!!

Just out of curiousity, which answer were you referring to? By my estimate, you got 4 good answers, one borderline answer and 1 piece of garbage. If you want, you can use the comments feature (look in upper right just above the post) to make a comment about an answer.

Scott, the whole answer was very good info. And made sense to me. THANKS!!

3 days does seem a bit excessive. Even with heavy network congestion etc. it shouldn't take that long. Maybe she's just exaggerating the time a little? Or due to timezones etc. maybe she only manages to get round to the emails after 48 hours etc.


I would have thought that the emails going to her would take around the same amount of time as the emails coming from her. Do the emails from her take 3 days?

Scott, the whole answer was very good info. And made sence to me. THANKS!!!!!!!!!!

You mean ALL the answers or one or more specific answers. Cause at least one of your answers made little sense to me.