Distribution Agent often dies with the following message. Why?

Replication Distribution Agent often dies with the following log entry. At that hour little is ever going on so I am surprised that the error occurs.

Failed Job -> JobName: Instance1-DB1-Instance2-33, StepName: Run agent., Message: Timeout expired. NOTE: The step was retried the requested number of times (10) without succeeding. The step failed..

Any ideas where to start?

Thanks

1. Did you run Distribution Agent in a SQL Agent job? If Yes, can you try to run distrib.exe through command line?

2. Was Distributor/Publisher/Subscriber started when you run the distribution?

3. Do the SQL Agent job owner has the access right to Distributor/Publisher/Subscriber?

Thanks.

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|||Yes, this runs as a Job and it runs normally most of the time so I assume the set-up is correct. It seems there is a transient issue that causes the issue. I just can't tell!|||

Can you check the cleanup job schedule?

What is the retention setting?

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|||From the "timeout" message, it is most likely a network/connectivity issue.