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Gold Medal Software 5
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Gold Medal Software - Volume 5 (Gold Medal) (1995).iso
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MAILCHK
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1994-10-18
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MailCheck
review by
Danny Williams
First the LAN replaced Sneakernet, now E-mail threatens to
completely replace the pink paper "while you were out" forms, carbon
"speedmail" memos, and even order forms and invoices. Clearly,
E-mail has gone from a convenience to a business critical necessity,
and it needs to be protected as such.
In many cases, separate E-mail post offices (or hub or message
store -- the name depends on your E-mail software) are located in
separate locations. Sometimes Accounting will have their own post
office, while shipping has another and receiving yet another.
Complicating matters further are branch offices in other cities or
even other countries that must be connected over a WAN (Wide Area
Network). Sending a message between these offices may entail
several hops through different gateways and a failure at a ny point
means your message does not get through. The usual mechanism for
detecting E-mail failure is irate users ringing your phone and
banging on your door asking why they haven't gotten any mail for the
last day, week or more.
Saving you that stress is MailCheck from Baranof Software.
MailCheck verifies that your E-mail gets through two ways: in Normal
Polling mode, MailCheck sends mail to itself over the various links
being tested, then complains privately to you when it takes too long
or doesn't get through at all. It also sends invalid messages to a
post office, then tells you if it returned the expected error
message. This is called Bounce Polling.
MailCheck has three main components: Poller, which sends out the
test messages via a local post office; Echo, which responds to those
test messages; and Monitor, which shows you what is going on. The
Poller can be run either as a TSR, in a repeating batch file, or as
a regular executable in a multitasking system depending on your
E-mail system. The computer running the Poller must be either
dedicated or at least only lightly loaded to properly test the
gateways. If the Poller goes down, the whole E-mail v alidation
system stops working. The Echo program, like the Poller, may need
to be a dedicated machine, depending on your E-mail system. Each
post office being verified needs its own nearby Echo machine. Using
Bounce Polling, no echo machine is necessary, but reliability is
less.
Monitoring MailCheck can be done from any Windows capable
machine. Real-time pop-up messages alert you to changes in the
status of any link while the program is running. Status is also
available from the DOS command line. Reports are also compiled and
saved so you don't have to look at all the popups, but you still
have a record of how your mail links are performing.
Although this product is not one you need for your home LAN or
even a small single post office business LAN, if you are in charge
of keeping the mail flowing throughout a large organization over
many segments, then this is the right tool for the job.
Baranof Software
479 Washington Street
Brighton, MA 02135
Phone: (617) 783-0080
Fax: (617) 254-1412