Problem with SMTP NoOp in Commons Net

[Pavan Kumar <pa...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I am using the commons net library for SMTP server communication. I built a
java class that returns me a SMTPClient object for communication.

The class behaves as
  - if a client object doesn't exist already , it will create a new and
gives it
  - if a client object is already there then it invokes the NoOp() to verify
the server connectivity and returns the object.

In the second case for my surprise the server was taking much longer
response time for a NoOp. When this NoOp was removed by just returning the
client object the response time was drastically improved like 80%.

Why should a SMTP server take more longer time for a NoOp than a regular
email request with content? Are there any special cases?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks
Pavan