On 2006/06/19 20:39, Peter Bako wrote:
> However I've noticed that if more than one or two people are getting email
> from their ISP (standard pop3), then the third person to try to get email
> will get an error that the server could not be reached.
The ISP probably restricts the number of connections from a single
IP address (either concurrent, or per-min). Apart from reducing resource
use on a busy server, this also makes password-guessing slower, so you
can understand why people might do it. See this from inetd.conf(5) on
$some_other_bsd:
{wait|nowait}[/max-child[/max-connections-per-ip-per-minute[/max-child-per-ip]]]
Test it from another connection bypassing the soekris if you like,
just have a couple of "telnet mail.whatever_isp.com 110" running, you
probably don't even need to login.
> Anyone have any idea as to the cause and a solution for this?
If this is what's happening..:
- Ask the ISP if they are restricting like this and see if they
can remove or relax the restriction; they might not realise that
by doing this they're causing problems for people with multiple
POP accounts behind a single NAT, and this is the easiest fix.
(They might not realise they're restricting it at all, even).
- If more IP addresses are available, use them for NATting:
nat on $foo from $foo:network -> { 1.1.1.1, 1.1.1.2, 1.1.1.3 }
- Run an internal mail server, either change to SMTP delivery of
email, or run some program like fetchmail so you can ensure only
one a/c is POPped at once.
> the processor is basically a PII/266 with 128M of RAM
Well... the geode-based systems (soekris, pcengines) have _much_
worse I/O performance than the equivalent PPro/PII. Integer CPU ops
are closer in speed. The Intels perform much better at electric
heating than the Soekris boards, which can be an advantage or a
disadvantage (:
