Localized mail servers, global scope

Thu Jun 23 16:04:08 UTC 2005

Stepping out of the lurker's doorway for the first time.....

On Jun 23, 2005 at 20:27 +0530, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
=>Wild idea and there's just too much good german beer here at MAAWG
=>(www.maawg.org) in Dusseldorf, but .. anybody tried anycasting a
=>mailserver?
=>
=>Operationally that is ...

I replied privately to the original poster since I was not on NANOG-post, 
but this would be interesting if the anycasting was tied into some load 
balancers doing geographical balancing.  That is all I dare say because 
I am already beyond my realm of comfort. :)  (I am a Solaris/Linux sys 
admin/mail admin/whatever-else-gets-thrown-at-me worker bee. :)

=>On 23/06/05, Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com <Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com> wrote:
=>> 
=>> > You don't need a central MX if each site MTA knows which users are at
=>> > which sites. Incoming email may have to take an extra hop if it comes in
=>> > to the wrong site, but that's a consequence of the specification that no
=>> > implementation can fix.
=>> 
=>> In other words, SMTP does not have the equivalent of an
=>> HTTP redirect which is what he wants here. Maybe SMTP
=>> really is broken? ;-)

But certain vendors do have MTAs that can kind of do this.  I am 
thinking about Sun's Messaging Server.  Chapter 12 of their Deployment 
Planning Guide <http://docs.sun.com/source/819-0063/ms-topology.html> 
mentions a "Distributed Topology" that I thinks fits the original 
posters requirement pretty closely.  You can abstract the mail reception 
(SMTP/MSA) routing behind the MTAs and also abstract the mail retrieval 
(IMAP/POP/Webmail) behind the Messaging MultiPlexors (MMPs).  I would 
think if further discussion on this vendors product is wanted, then 
please see a web site <ims.balius.com> that has information on the user 
mailing list.

Stepping back into the lurker's door way as the sun is to bright..... :)

--
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Derek Diget                            Office of Information Technology
Western Michigan University - Kalamazoo  Michigan  USA - www.wmich.edu/
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