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Date:      Tue, 11 Aug 1998 12:24:56 -0400
From:      Brian Cully <shmit@kublai.com>
To:        Andre Oppermann <oppermann@pipeline.ch>, Gary Palmer <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG>
Cc:        GVB <gvb@tns.net>, freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Mail server...
Message-ID:  <19980811122456.16956@kublai.com>
In-Reply-To: <35D00CEC.235D6171@pipeline.ch>; from Andre Oppermann on Tue, Aug 11, 1998 at 11:20:44AM %2B0200
References:  <4827.902734360@gjp.erols.com> <35D00CEC.235D6171@pipeline.ch>

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On Tue, Aug 11, 1998 at 11:20:44AM +0200, Andre Oppermann wrote:
> > go wild and write your own communications protocol to fetch & store messages
> > on the stores, and have the customer-facing machines do more work.
> 
> Shure, just write your own communication protocol. I thought the
> questioner is not so high skilled to write his own comm protocol.

I think you missed the point. :-)

The idea that I think he's trying to push is that using a single big
NFS server for your backend mailstore isn't even close to ideal, and that
you can accomplish the same thing by using:
	1) multiple smaller mail stores, which do not use NFS for message
	   transfer,
	2) POP/IMAP as a frontend for message retrieval, and
	3) MX boxen that act as an incoming mail gateway that do the
	   `local' delivery onto the mail stores.

The trick to having customers not know on which mail store they live is
to use a POP/IMAP proxy that knows where they live and connects to the
proper machine when the username is supplied. On the MX side of things
you can just use sendmail's aliasing rules to have messages stored on
the right mailstore.

This tends to be more scalable than an NFS solution.

> BTW: Can you give me a little bit more information on your mail server
> setup and the protocol you wrote?

Not that I want to speak for Gary, but I think the above should clarify
things a little more (I doubt he wrote a delivery/transfer protocol for
his mail system).

-bjc

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