>I start a free email service, within a year or so it grows to a point i
>imail
Distinguish within the Imail "product line" what your selling because
POP3 mailbox access is very lightweight ( technical and human/support
resource consumption ) compared to HTTP access. The mail machine is
more heavily solicited and the user mail sessions last longer with
HTTP mail than POP3/SMTP access.
>cant handle it anymore i cant really switch systems right?
Yes, you can always switch. But it's not fun, so I recommend "over
buying" hardware now ( and the 24 x 7 logistics/spares to keep it
going) to push the inevitable hardware upgrade further into the future.
Imail7 better have a multi-box web mail solution or, I expect, a lot
of the Imail web messaging customers, with HotMail / FreeMail
wannabee dreams, are going to be running into a wall next year with a
one-box web mail Ipswitch server.
>I guess one of my questions is, is imail limited by only hardware?
HTTP web mail access doesn't scale as well as pop/smtp access.
We have all heard in the Imail list about single Imail machines with
100K to 250K accounts. These are pop/smtp services, not web
messaging. And the 250K + 25 gb.day guy was using a big SUN for
outgoing SMTP delivery (his Imail was not doing DNS lookups or
queuing deferred mail or doing remote deliveries), and he ran no web
access. His Imail box was 95% idle. It wouldn't be prudent to
expect your Imail web mail box with 50K accounts to be 95% idle.
Back of the envelope:
If the user load of 50 K user sessions of 2 minutes/session was
spread evenly throughout the day, you'd have about 70 simultaneous
web mail users 24 x 7. But of course, the load is very peaky, maybe
3:1 or 4:1 or 6:1, (and two minutes isn't very long for daily webmail
per user), so 200 to 400 simultaneous mail users would be a peak
requirement for a 50K user web mail box. hmmmm. What box to buy? :)))
Anybody here running 100 to 400 simultaneous web mail users?? on what
kind of box? What kind of stability? SSL is available/user or
not? Are my back-of-the-envelope calculations in the ballpark in
your experience?
>If its only hardware, not a problem,
oh, I see. :))
>dont have a problem upgrading hardware every year or so, but i cant
>imagine moving all the users onto a new system.
"system" = Imail software precisely? Yes, asking your users to
migrate to a totally different web interface would be a serious
"issue". I doubt whether you could find one as superb as Ron's AND
for the price (go price the very nice www.MailStudio.com unlimited
version) you can see that committing to Ron's templates is a
strategic committment because Ron's product is what your users see,
not Imail. Users don't like change. (hey, Ron, nice business plan !!)
In fact, you should therefore realize that, if your primary product
is web mail, then Ron The Blushing Groom is your now your key
supplier of software, not Ipswitch. Ron's software is now the more
valuable to "web mail providers" than any specific brand of
SMTP/mailbox server underneath.
Len
http://BIND8NT.MEIway.com: ISC BIND 8.2.2 p5 & 8.2.3 T6B for NT4 & W2K
http://IMGate.MEIway.com: Build free, hi-perf, anti-spam mail gateways
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