Topic: Email delivery time - unusual improvement

[Brenno]

I'm running 60 users, 12 with Blackberry handsets, all configured for IMAP access.

When we were running on SME 6.0 with older hardware (dual PIII 1GHz, 1GB RAM), we found that both Thunderbird and our Blackberry handsets experienced a delay between when an email arrived in the user's inbox and when it would appear in their client; for Thunderbird it was less than 3 minutes, but for the Blackberries it was closer to 15 minutes.

Now that we've upgraded to SME 7.4 with newer hardward (quadcore Xeon 2.5GHz, 8GB RAM), we find that there is an almost instantaneous arrival of email in Thunderbird and on the Blackberry handsets.

While this isn't a bad thing - it's actually made the Blackberries more useful - I'm baffled by how this is possible considering that all Thunderbird clients are set to check for new messages every 10 minutes and all Blackberries (via the BIS website) are also set to check for new messages every 10 minutes.  Does this mean that the BB servers are in constant contact with my server, possibly using a significant amount of bandwidth in the process?  Am I just paranoid?  Should I just be quiet and be happy about it?

[Stefano]

Hi

not an answer but a question

Now that we've upgraded to SME 7.4 with newer hardward (quadcore Xeon 2.5GHz, 8GB RAM)

what kernel are you running? does it see all the ram?
just a curiosity

thank you

Ciao
Stefano

[Brenno]

My kernel version is 2.6.9-78.0.8.Elsmp and /proc/meminfo reports MemTotal is 8305996 kB.

[Stefano]

excellent

thank you
Ciao
Stefano

[thomasch]

Brenno,

So, you upgraded SME server 6.x to 7.4 and upgraded hardware from PIII 1GHz 1GB RAM to Quadcore Xeon 2.5GHz 8GB RAM and the mail delay problem went away.

I can't give you exact technical answer why this solve the problem, but answer to your question "Should I just be quiet and be happy about it" definitely is YES!

Oh, and your server spec makes me drolls. That's what you want right? To show off  your hardware spec. *kidding*


Regarding your worry about server bandwidth, you can always check traffic graph from and to your SME server using sme7admin or cacti. iptraf also usefull from server console/ssh login.

thomas