Topic: Number of users limit, etc.

[Jim Huneycutt]

I have a client (a small ISP, providing Internet access through cable modem service) who has the potential to need as many 1000+ users, hopefully on an SME server, mainly for email accounts and a few customer "personal" web sites. Does anyone know the current "hard-wired" user limit, if any in: 5.5, 5.6 and 6.0? (I did search for "user limit" and a few other things on the forum - if it's there I missed it, sorry).

Should we limit users to POP access only or also allow webmail and IMAP access?

What other issues, besides the limit on the number of users would come to play with say 1000 email users on SME?

Any suggestions as how best to handle DHCP for 1000 users using SME, assuming we have a sufficiently large block of routable IP addresses (they must be routable as some of the customers will be sharing their Internet connection within their homes/businesses - and my customer currently has a block from UUNET, his T1 provider)?

Thanks for any help and advice,
jim

[Dan Brown]

SME is not designed to serve routable IPs.  The other questions shouldn't be a problem; it's just a matter of sufficient hardware.  There's no hard-coded user limit.

[dave]

Hi Dan,

I have a question for you...  What do you mean by "not designed to serve routable IP's?"  I always thought DHCP would provide whatever IPs were defined in the IP range, regardless of what you're using to provide DHCP services.  I've never tried to set up a range of public IP's but would SME actually block routing of public addys?

... just curious ...

Dave

[Dan Brown]

Well, in short, I meant exactly what I said.  Yes, DHCP will provide whatever addresses are defined, not caring whether they're (for example) 10.x or 12.x.  However, the SME server is a NAT firewall, using one-to-many NAT.  No matter what IP addresses you give the client machines, they'll all access the Internet as the IP address of the SME server.