https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/ Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:55:23 +0000 Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:29:07 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Web Wiz Forums 11.04 360 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/RSS_post_feed.asp?TID=5710 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_images/web_wiz_forums.png https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/ https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8518&title=limiting-queue-runners#8518 Author: LogSat
Subject: 5710
Posted: 13 July 2006 at 11:29pm

Andrew,

SpamFilter is not strictly an MTA. It is a product that has to receive emails, completely reject some of them, archive others, and pass on to other servers clean ones. To do so efficiently, unlike what you state, the best way for us to do so is to pass on each email in the same way it was received. This means that each incoming connection will result in a outgoing connection if the email is clean.

Performance-wise, please post a new query in this forum asking for other user's experience. This will allow you not to take our word when we say that a very small 3MB application can indeed handle millions of emails/day, on very simple hardware (as in a VMWare guest machine with low CPU and RAM available).
]]> Thu, 13 Jul 2006 23:29:07 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8518&title=limiting-queue-runners#8518 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8517&title=limiting-queue-runners#8517 Author: Guests
Subject: 5710
Posted: 13 July 2006 at 8:48pm

Hi Again,

The reason for reducing threads is that the SMTP standard supportsmultiple smtp transactions in a single TCP connection (one after theafter).  This is what the RFC dictates, and every other good MTA Ihave used follows these rules.

Typically you will have connections from all over the world (slow)being forwarded to a few internal severs. You also have the luxury ofqueuing internally (for a few seconds if needed).  It makes senseto follow the standards and not just spew TCP connections through, butinstead group them by destination server and pass through seqentially(with additional queue runners if needed).

If you take this approach (and follow the standards) there is nobottle-neck, and things actually run much more efficiently on bothends).  I have worked on some exceptionally high volume mailsystems (in the millions/day) - and this is the only good way toapproach the situation.

I am not trying to be overly critical of this product, instead pointingout a weaknesses that could be improved upon.  I just can't seeyour product being used in a high volume isp environment.

Thanks,
Andrew.

lyndonje wrote: Hi Andrew, If SF was hadling 40 incomming connections, but only passing out 5,assuming your inbound feed was constant you'd end up with a bottleneckon SF. Why would you want that? Also, if SF is receiving 40 incomming connections, what would happen ifyou didn't have SF? Your destination server would only have to processthe 40 concurrent connections anyway, plus processing the spam. If youinbound load is too high for your destination server to handle, you needto upgrade or introduce a second for load balancing. If you can limit the number of inbound connections on your destinationserver, which I assume by your earlier comment "It is possible to setthis in every otherMTA that I have used" that you can, why don't you do this? That wayyou'll have a bottleneck on your SF, which would be the same as if whatyou wanted to achieve was possible.

]]> Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:48:07 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8517&title=limiting-queue-runners#8517 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8502&title=limiting-queue-runners#8502 Author: lyndonje
Subject: 5710
Posted: 12 July 2006 at 3:37am

Hi Andrew,

If SF was hadling 40 incomming connections, but only passing out 5,assuming your inbound feed was constant you'd end up with a bottleneckon SF. Why would you want that?

Also, if SF is receiving 40 incomming connections, what would happen ifyou didn't have SF? Your destination server would only have to processthe 40 concurrent connections anyway, plus processing the spam. If youinbound load is too high for your destination server to handle, you needto upgrade or introduce a second for load balancing.

If you can limit the number of inbound connections on your destinationserver, which I assume by your earlier comment "It is possible to setthis in every otherMTA that I have used" that you can, why don't you do this? That wayyou'll have a bottleneck on your SF, which would be the same as if whatyou wanted to achieve was possible.]]> Wed, 12 Jul 2006 03:37:26 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8502&title=limiting-queue-runners#8502 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8501&title=limiting-queue-runners#8501 Author: LogSat
Subject: 5710
Posted: 12 July 2006 at 12:48am

AndrewD,

SpamFilter will forward any "clean" email it receives immediately in real-timeas it arrives. So assuming a listserver is sending massive legitimate emails to your users, and the incoming limit in SpamFilter is 40, in theory SpamFilter could have 40 concurrent incoming connections from that listserver. in this case, as emails are forwarded in real-time, SpamFilter will also have 40 outgoing concurrent connections to your destination mail server.

The only time when emails will be queued up is if your destination SMTP server is offline. In that case SpamFilter will queue the clean emails, and will attempt delivery on regular intervals. When your server will come back online, then in this case SpamFilter will forward all the queued emails to your destination SMTP server, using a number of concurrent threads equal to one half of the "Max incoming connection".

SpamFilter should forward as many emails as it can when flushing the queue, as when this happens it will be because your server was down. If it was down for several hours, there may potentially be hundred of thousands of clean emails queued for delivery, and they need to be processed as fast as possible to avoid further delays to end users.

You should size the value of "Max incoming connections" to a value that your destination SMTP server can handle.
]]> Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:48:29 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8501&title=limiting-queue-runners#8501 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8500&title=limiting-queue-runners#8500 Author: Guests
Subject: 5710
Posted: 12 July 2006 at 12:28am

Hi Roberto,

Thank you for your reply.  Is there any way to manually change theoutgoing (forwarding) SMTP number of threads without touching theincoming limit? - I need to leave the incoming 40+, but I want to keepthe outgoing to less than 5.

I see no real need to have so many queue runners hitting a singleremote server at a time (within one second)...  Ideally the firstqueue runner should be spawned, and then another x (ie 5 mins later) -and so forth to deal with the load.  This is a very effectivemethod for mail delivery (don't forget that multiple emails can be sentdown one established SMTP session). 

If this is not possible for the current version, would you considerallowing this configuration to be changed in future versions?

Thanks again for your time.

Cheers,
Andrew.

LogSat wrote: AndrewD, SpamFilter has a limit on the maximum number of concurrent incoming connections (on the Settings - Configuration tab). Whenit comes to forwarding queued emails to your destination SMTP server,SpamFilter will use one half of that value to calculate the number ofmaximum concurrent connections to your server.

]]> Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:28:36 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8500&title=limiting-queue-runners#8500 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8499&title=limiting-queue-runners#8499 Author: LogSat
Subject: 5710
Posted: 11 July 2006 at 8:57pm

AndrewD,

SpamFilter has a limit on the maximum number of concurrent incoming connections (on the Settings - Configuration tab).

When it comes to forwarding queued emails to your destination SMTP server, SpamFilter will use one half of that value to calculate the number of maximum concurrent connections to your server.
]]> Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:57:45 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8499&title=limiting-queue-runners#8499 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8498&title=limiting-queue-runners#8498 Author: Guests
Subject: 5710
Posted: 11 July 2006 at 8:17pm

Hi,

Yes, this is what I meant... It is possible to set this in every otherMTA that I have used :( - Oh well, I guess i'll just have to look atother software.

Thanks for your time :)

Cheers,
A

lyndonje wrote: By queue runners do you mean TCP connections to your destination server? I don't think you can limit/set this in SF, but I'd have thought youshould be able to do this on your receiving server - ie set the maximumnumber of listening threads. If they're all in use, SF will queue theemails it couldn't send through and retry after n minutes set under'Process queue every n minutes' under Settings/Configuration.

]]> Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:17:39 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8498&title=limiting-queue-runners#8498 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8493&title=limiting-queue-runners#8493 Author: lyndonje
Subject: 5710
Posted: 11 July 2006 at 3:46am

By queue runners do you mean TCP connections to your destination server?

I don't think you can limit/set this in SF, but I'd have thought youshould be able to do this on your receiving server - ie set the maximumnumber of listening threads. If they're all in use, SF will queue theemails it couldn't send through and retry after n minutes set under'Process queue every n minutes' under Settings/Configuration.
]]> Tue, 11 Jul 2006 03:46:59 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8493&title=limiting-queue-runners#8493 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8491&title=limiting-queue-runners#8491 Author: Guests
Subject: 5710
Posted: 10 July 2006 at 8:04pm

Hi All,

I am currently using the trial version.  I have noticed that thequeue runner is exceptionally agressive... Opening up 5+ threads to thesame mailhost within a second.  Is there any way to stop this?(ideally cut down the number of queue runners, or limit the totalnumber?)


Thanks,
Andrew
]]> Mon, 10 Jul 2006 20:04:31 +0000 https://www.logsat.com/spamfilter/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=5710&PID=8491&title=limiting-queue-runners#8491