At 01:08 AM 4/18/99 , Michael Doerner wrote:
>I try to understand whether I can get a similar functionality of products
>from the Windows world like Wingate here in Linux?
>Wingate (and there are plenty of similar products) offer also a kind of
>proxy for the desktops email clients (Outlook, Netscape email, etc) which
>means that in very small offices where there might be only 2 or 3 separate
>email accounts (POP3) available, the client PC doesn't need his own
>dedicated modem. When they check their single, remote mailbox at the ISP
>their email clients requests go through Wingate. This is not a modem sharing
>which would end up in an exclusive usage of the modem at that time for a
>single user. This is proxying all Internet access requests through the
>server and therefore this single dialup connection can be used from various
>client PCs with different applications at the same time (as long as
>bandwidth will allow).
For a buisiness application, I would almost recommend a low cost hardware
router, but it looks like in this situation you'll be dealing with dynamic
IP's. In which case I would look for a router which handles NAT... I am sure
that there are linux programs out there that could handle this, but I think in
this situation you probably want something that will work the job for you so
that you will spend minimal site time. I would try to sell these people on
either A. An ISDN router which will cost more in the short term, but will be
worth its weight in gold in the long term which will handle NAT, and allow you
to use it as a real router when they are ready to expand, or B. use software
which I know of no stable buisiness solution in this situation myself.
>When the organisation grows, they might want to replace these single email
>accounts with an own email domain, hosted by the ISP and giving each LAN
>user now his own email account for external and internal email. Therefore it
>comes to the next server question ...
>- Email server:
>As far as I understand, Sendmail is the typical MTA in the UNIX/Linux world
>for this (and there also seem to be other products available as I have read
>here).
>Would Sendmail as an MTA be able to give all LAN clients (Outlook, Netscape,
>etc.) email access for internal & external emailing - still over the above
>mentioned dialup connection?
As long as it is a dedicated connection with Static IP addresses in which case
you are almost definately looking at a router, or a software router
alternative.
>If yes, will we have to do this by starting with our own domain name or
>could we start by collecting the mails from various POP3 accounts and
>distributing these mails to the internal LAN clients? Of course an own
>domain would be preferred and wants to be used in the longer view.
In the situation where you get a dedicated access you can run your own e-mail
server locally from which they can pop and SMTP as much as they like. keeping
it with the ISP would be the easy way out, if you can spare a computer for an
e-mail server would be the most economical.
>- Faxing: (Hylafax seems to be the server part for this?) but I haven't read
>enough for this and I better do that before asking.
>Thanks for any answers and your patience with this long mail
I don't know how good these answers have been, but these are the things I would
do.
Take care,
Tim Pintsch
Projects Manager
Infinite Data Source, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - 888/999-4374
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