All email was like this at one time. In the 90s we were told to expect emails to take a few hours.

If you want immediate response use IRC or actually phone someone.

bradleyjg 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If was like this because it was designed before networks were expected to be fully connected at any one time. Mail would hop its way towards its destination as intermediate nodes dialed in over modem to upstreams.

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dd8601fn 14 hours ago | parent [-]

It was like that because each check/send process was pop3 call that looked more like processing a queue of work for offline clients.

Now it’s more like being subscribed and listening for events.

	▲	Reason077 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The transition from POP to IMAP was a big step forward, back in the day.

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icedchai 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I had email at my house, in the early 90's, over a UUCP feed. It polled every 4 hours.