In article <1993Jan07.035947.15311@i88.isc.com>, mikebo@i88.isc.com (Michael Borowiec) writes:
|> If anyone has gone the MS-MAIL with SMTP gateway route, I'd be
|> interested in your experiences so far. Especially...
|>
|> 1) How hard it is to get/keep the gateway configured?
It was quite easy to get configured. Keeping is just a matter of add/del/chg
SMTP gateway recipients via the ADMIN program. The key here was to use domain names rather than machine names in recipients addresses to eliminate changes of multiple users in the SMTP lists. Let the UNIX smarthost do the work.
|> 2) Do MS-Mail postoffices require an additional and expensive
|> "downstream" module to route or send SMTP mail to the gateway
|> or to translate MS-Mail to Internet style addresses? A Microsoft
|> rep has claimed the SMTP gateway package is all we need.
I was told amd so does the manual, that a dedicated PC was required. Anyway
I just bought a cheap 286 with 2 MB RAM and a 40 MB HD and it works fine.
|> 3) MS-DOS is single tasking, I assume one SMTP connection at a time?
|> Does this create real problems? What are they?
A small test just showed me it would only handle one incoming SMTP connect
at a time. The other one said:
admin@pscpcs... Connecting to pscpcs via ether...
Trying 192.9.210.7... Connection refused by pscpcs
admin@pscpcs... Deferred: Connection refused by pscpcs
Pushing the sendmail queue 5 seconds later did accept the connect though. I
have not yet seen a problem.
|> 4) Any problem with the gateway wedging up? If so, any workarounds?
This is where I has the headaches. Initially I had 2 3Com 3c503s in the
gateway machine which the doc says is supported with either FTP's PCTCP
or Wollongong's TCP stack for the TCP/IP side. I tried both TCP setups
and the gateway machine kept hanging every so often, up to 5 or 6 times
a day. The third supported HW/SW cvonfig was Excelan board asnd their
software. This has been up for 6 months without a single hang. So I've quite
happy with it since then.
|> 5) Can you have multiple SMTP gateways on one LOCAL Area Network?
|> 6) Can you have multiple SMTP gateways on one WIDE Area Network?
|> 7) If yes to 5 or 6, how do you route mail to the correct gateway?