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Matt
~
I
agree, Focus on server performance.
_________________
David Penrose
Top Network
LLC
360.392.0467 v
Seattle
206.529.4128 v
206.202.3776 f
Dave,
Certainly it's your
prerogative to set the policies as you see fit. I would only suggest that
instead of focusing on the logging load, that you instead indicate more frequent
checking causes more load on your server's resources. I believe that under
heavy load and many, many users, the open connections, authentication and checks
on the file system can contribute to reducing a server's ability to handle the
load. The larger the number of users that you have, the more it makes
sense to set a policy. A few users doing this shouldn't make much of a
difference in any environment.
If you are looking for something that
bothers the heck out of me, bring up all of the clients with automated mailing
scripts and bulk-mail lists that have excessive numbers of bad addresses.
I regularly get bombed by this sort of thing, and it's never purposeful, though
always the result of an oversight. It takes a ton of resources to spam
check and then scan with two virus scanners 1,000 E-mails delivered as fast as
my server will accept them. I have one customer that insists on sending
themselves a copy of each of 350 E-mails that are sent to their clients on a
nightly basis, yet it is impossible for them to do anything constructive with
this daily volume of E-mail landing in an
account.
Matt
David Penrose wrote:
Matt ~
I'm glad you contributed your thoughts regarding service. I was getting
ready to send out a slightly modified version of the "canned text." After
reading your response, I thought that composition of a good service message
may result in appreciative and considerate customers doing what is most
helpful. Upon further revision...
Dear CUSTOMER
~
Our
mail-server logs show
that your email software checks for new
email more frequently than every five minutes. This could have an impact on support and server
performance.
A log entry is made with every login (email check).
Frequent checks generate hundreds
of extra log file lines each day. More log entries makes it more difficult to read the logs when we are trying to research a
problem.
Logging in so often also causes the server to
work a little extra. If everyone set there email to be checked every minute of two,
degradation in service would
be noticeable.
If frequent
email checks are necessary for the way you would like to manage business
communication, then please leave your settings as they are. However, if you feel you can accept a modest up tick
on your Automatic Send/Receive schedule, then we would appreciate this
being set to 5 minutes at a minimum. Scheduling your automatic
send/receive for 10 minutes or
more would be better
yet.
Thank
you.
_________________
David
Penrose
Rod,
I wasn't
quite joking, though I don't have a need to do this at the present. If
my servers were ever overburdened and I was seeking to steal back some
threads, I might move forward on this. It's my opinion that I should
strive to make E-mail as clean, reliable and real-time as possible, and
limiting people to no more than once every 5 minutes would defeat that.
Instead of enforcing this, I would rather just simply communicate best
practices and suggest that once every 5 minutes is optimal. If I were a
phone company, I wouldn't tell my subscribers to not make phone calls more
than once a minute, so as long as my servers can keep up without issue, I'll
allow the power users to do this when they want to. Personally, I have
my accounts set to once a minute, and I find that to be useful for my
needs. I may change my tune entirely if I was to ever experience
issues.
Matt
Rod Dorman wrote:
On Tuesday, February 21, 2006, 18:02:55, Matt wrote:
Write a log analyzer app and send them a message every time they check
less than your required minimum :)
You might have been joking but that's exactly what I do. I've forgotten
who I stole the original from but heres the canned text that I send 'em.
Sorry to pester you but in our logs I see that you logon to check your
e-mail more frequently than every five minutes which generates hundreds
of extra log file lines each day and makes it harder to read the logs
when we are trying to research a problem.
Logging in so often also causes the server to work a little harder than
it needs to degrading service for everyone else on the server. If
everyone did it, it would be pretty noticeable.
Even assuming you got an e-mail every minute you wouldn't have time to
read it and respond before the next check would be downloading more. It
would make our work easier and the server run much more efficiently if
you would please logon every 5 minutes at a minimum and 10 or more would
be way better yet.
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