From owner-freebsd-hubs@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 20 10:37:54 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hubs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F3FA716A4CE for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:37:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from ms001msg.fastwebnet.it (ms001msg.fastwebnet.it [213.140.2.51]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 94D4F43D5F for ; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:37:50 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from mij@bitchx.it) Received: from [1.11.158.106] (1.11.158.106) by ms001msg.fastwebnet.it (6.7.019) id 3FE794EB0035771E; Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:37:48 +0100 In-Reply-To: <20040120153117.GL86062@isnic.is> References: <93570F3C-4B56-11D8-9538-000A95CCF092@bitchx.it> <20040120153117.GL86062@isnic.is> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v609) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Mij Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:37:52 +0100 To: Olafur Osvaldsson X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.609) cc: hubs@freebsd.org Subject: Re: mx vs ns X-BeenThere: freebsd-hubs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Distributions Hubs: mail sup ftp List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 18:37:54 -0000 On 20/gen/04, h 16:31, Olafur Osvaldsson wrote: > I see nothing wrong with this setup as when a MX is down the > mail gets queued at the sender server untill the MX is reachable > again but NS requests don't queue up and people get impatient > so multiple NS records are needed but not multiple MX. Technically, this is not completely wrong. Anyway, this way you rely on sender's service for solving possible problems on your side. This is not good. The maximum age for a message in the queue, the tryouts and retry intervals are not specified in any RFC. Anyone can push the queue maximum size lower, or shorten the max life of message in it. It's also possible me to run a mta without a "hard" queue, just suddendly reporting an error to the sender on failures, although rare. This way you let your mail completely up to the sender's server strategy. > Also, multiple MX servers makes more work for the postmaster > in regard to filters and such in addition to be not needed. Yes, of course more complexity implies more work. A backup mx does not require very much work anyway. You just have to choose a backup server and set it not to "reject" mail for those domain. This way it will queue messages for the master, and then try itself to deliver them, making the sender's mx believe everything went fine. So your mail is kept by a trusted server, the one you've chosen, and you're safe because you do know how it will handle its delivering. On a qmail server, for example, this would require seconds to be set up, and probably no maintainance at all. mx1.freebsd.org may have proven its stability over the years, and this could suffice you to say "no thanks, the current solution is enough for me". Since a backup mx doesn't require the load of work of a dns server (the are no syncs nor stuff like that) probably the compromise would pend to this latter solution instead of leaving things like they are now. bye