What does the defer and failures (x/5) message really mean?

Question

What does the defer and failures (x/5) message really mean?

Answer

Percentage counts do not start until there have been 5 defers or failures. This is what the (x/5) is indicating in the logs. The measurement of defers and failures kicks in once 5 defers or failures have occurred.

As an example, if a user sends out 9 emails and three of them have failed or are deferred, you would see a (3/5) in the logs. If you have a 25% threshold on suspending email sending, even though 33% of this user's messages have bounced, that user will still be able to send email because 5 messages haven't bounced yet. The percentage of failures kicks in after 5 total failures.

In the example (9/5 (75%)), it is just showing you the total number of failures for that user, which is 9. Five is just a threshold at which the percentage of tallying starts. The 75% indicates that 75% of this user's messages have failed. From this, we can determine that the user has sent 12 total messages, and 9 of them (75%) have failed or have been deferred.

The only measurement to base these restrictions on is a percentage of failed messages. There is no way to set this to a specific number of messages, as it is based entirely on a percentage of mail sent per user.

When a defer or failure happens, if there are additional failures in the past 60 minutes, +1 is added to this count. Let's say you are trying to send out 60 emails, one each minute.

If the first 5 emails go through without an error, then the next one fails, that would be the first failure. So, in the first 6 minutes, you have 1 failure. The next 10 emails go through fine, but then 4 emails after that fail. At this point, you have reached the 5 failure limit.

It has been 20 minutes altogether, however, the first failure was 6 minutes in.
The domain sending out the emails would not be able to send any further email until an hour has passed since the first failure. In this case, you would need to wait 46 minutes to send another email, as the first failure would drop off at that point, leaving you with 4 failures in the past hour.