Topic: Email setup challenge

[Dean Mumby]

Hi everyone
I have a challenge for setting up email with SME 5.1.2 . I have one domain with currently 20 users each with their own mailbox at their isp user1@domain.co.za , user2@domain.co.za etc. These users are split in two seperate branches and currently sending an email to someone in the same office is the same as sending an email to someone in the other office - you send it to the isp. Not and ideal situation . We want to install an sme server at one of the offices and I am trying to come up with a viable solution for routing mail from one office to the other using their isp.

[Laurence Griffiths]

You do not say whether you want to set up an SME server at the branch office as well. If you are, then register another domain for the branch office and forward all mail for those people in the branch office to the branch office email domain.

If you only have a couple of people in the branch office and you don't want to set up an additional domain and SME server, then you can simply forward email for people in the branch offices to their ISP-provided email addresses. They can continue picking up their email as before.

On the other hand...... If you have your various branches connected via a WAN, you can set up the branch sub-nets to be seen as part of the local network by the SME server and can then send and receive email through your head-office SME server. We do this between our main server in Sydney and the branches in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. It works really well!

There are a huge number of other options, but their suitability would depend on your exact requirements.

Alles van die beste

Larry Griffiths

[Dean Mumby]

The other office only has 5 users and they send and recieve directly from their isp unfortunately there mailboxes are user@domain so I dont have any option of forwarding directly to their account from sme , it will simply look for their account and drop the email in it , what I think is my best solution is to use sub-domains , ie sme will be sme.domain.co.za and the other branch will be ct.domain.co.za , then create all the users for both branches on sme and forward the email for external users to externaluser@ct.domain.co.za with the mx records for ct.domain.co.za handled by their isp sme should send the email to the isp who will then reroute to externaluser@ct.domain.co.za mailbox , where the external users can collect from, the only down side is that the isp will need to be informed of any change to user status
At least this way the users will not need to be aware of the fact that we are using sub-domains as there email address will not change only their mailbox.

Does this make sense ?
will it work ?

Baie dankie en voerspoed.

Dean Mumby

[Laurence Griffiths]

It sounds as if your current setup is exactly the same as a subsidiary company based in Sydney. - Their whole domain was hosted by their ISP and all email to that domain was stored on the ISP's servers. The users in Sydney and all the branch offices picked up and sent their email via the ISP's servers which were accessed via a local POP.

We implemented an SME server as follows:-

We requested the ISP who was hosting the domain to forward all email for that domian directly to our SME server. (If they hadn't been prepared to do that, we would have told them to forward all email for that domain to a multidrop email box and picked it up from there).

We then created generic email accounts on the email server of the ISP of their choice for each user who wasn't in Sydney or who couldn't access the Sydney server via our WAN. We then set the SME server to forward mail addressed to thses people to their ISP-provided addresses. They then used their local isp to pick up and receive email.

Of course, the email address on the external user's email client is set up to be of the form "user@domain.com.au".

There is another option. - But this is only viable if you have a permanent internet connection with a fixed IP address. You could make your SME server's POP and IMAP servers available to the outside world and your external (or branch) users could pick up their mail directly from the SME server. They would continue sending out email via their local ISP.

Here in Australia, local calls are NOT timed. So a permanent dial-up connection IS an option for a small office. I gather from friends in South Africa that locals calls ARE timed. So the multidrop email pickup from your main ISP might be the way to go.

Beste wense en laat my weet hoe dit gaan.

Larry