Topic: Webmail Limitations

[Brian Bisset]

Is there any user limitations on the webmail product?  Specifically, and hardware notwithstanding, would the webmail product be able to handle 2000 clients?  5000 clients?  Etcetera...

If not, what mail daemon would you recommend we use (in conjunction with E-Smith), preferably with unlimited user license?

TIA, BBisset

[Dan Brown]

Ignoring hardware, there's no limit at all on the webmail product.  Since e-smith includes a mail daemon (WU-IMAP) with an unlimited user license, you're ready to go out of the box.  I like courier-IMAP instead, but I don't know that it necessarily offers any real advantages over WU, and you'd have to install it yourself.

[Tim Chipman]

If you want to do a "LARGE SCALE" web mail server, you might want to have a look at this URL:

http://www.horde.org/papers/Scalable_webmail_HOWTO.php


This is a discussion "White Paper" presented on the topic of using the "horde freeware webmail interface" (as used in E-smith server) on a large scale.. makes use of Postfix as the MTA, LDAP for authentication and routing of messages to the appropriate virtual-subdomain mail server, etc etc.  A FANTASTIC article IMHO and seems to suggest you can go to 50K plus mail accounts with appropriate hardware.


It is entirely possible that a single E-smith box *could* handle a fairly large ## of mail users (although if it was doing everything by itself - HTTP / IMAP / SMTP -- then this would clearly cut the ## of simultaneous users.. which is ultimately the only big concern).


-Tim Chipman