[geeks] thoughts on SMTP

[Dave McGuire]

On March 24, Mike Meredith wrote:
> > (2x Ultra 1-170's, 512Mb memory, moving a few gigs of mail _each_ per
> > days)
> 
> They're not exactly very modern are they ? Sure they do the job, but 
> how many places with significant levels of mail traffic will have mail 
> servers that old ?

  I'd say the majority of them are, Mike.  The whole "this is two months
old, better replace it!"  attitude doesn't dig its way into very many
large networks.  If it did, system testing and certification would
take longer than the "lifetime" (according to the marketroids) of
these systems.

  Newer systems have faster CPUs, higher memory bandwidth, and higher
disk bandwidth...But for systems like the U1/170 and up, the
bottleneck will rarely (if ever) be anything other than internet
connectivity for most network services like http and smtp.  Of course
there are exceptions to this, but they're rare.

  Now, for VERY LARGE networks like those that Dave Passmore has
designed mail handling systems for, of course a U1/170 won't come
close to doing the trick.  But I don't think we're talking about those
mailmonsters. :) For a few gigs of mail per day, they'll do fine.

        -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire                    "Watch those lateral G's man,
St. Petersburg, FL               I've got sandwiches in my lap!" -Sridhar