Matt, thanks for the information. I will try that later tonight. Since this
has to do with the network stack, is a reboot required for the changed/added
parameters to become effective?

 

John T

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2007 11:26 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [IMail Forum] TCP sockets & Windows -> maybe associated with 2006.2
issues

 

I have run into TCP socket limitations with two different E-mail servers
that run on Windows.  Both were the result of using too many TCP sockets.

Windows by default will only allow around 1,800 sockets to be used, and when
you start getting to that point, unexpected things can happen.  Sockets are
used for SMTP connections, POP3 connections, IMAP connections, DNS lookups,
and all sorts of .NET stuff too.  Things like greylisting will keep sockets
open for long periods of time, and systems that do spam blocking with DNS
lookups to blacklists tend to push out more than is typical.  A good program
designed to handle such load will pool the sockets in order to avoid hitting
these limits.  Both products that I had issues with introduced pooling in
order to resolve these issues.

As a work around, or for tuning a Windows server that does such things, I
recommend changing or adding the following registry parameters:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\MaxHashTableSize =
65536 (DWORD)
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\TcpTimedWaitDelay =
30 (DWORD)
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\MaxUserPort = 65534
(DWORD)
HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\TcpNumConnections,
16777214 (DWORD)

You can google each key name for a description of what they do.  This can
definitely help if there are issues with the TCP sockets, but it's not a
permanant solution.  The permanent solution is to have the application pool
if it isn't already.

If this helps, it would definitely be good to share that with this list
and/or Ipswitch in the event that they are still looking for the problem.

Matt

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