A Trio of Mail Servers

• Vircom VOP Mail [Windows]
• Stalker CommuniGate Pro [Linux, Unix, Windows]
• Rockliffe MailSite 4 DataCenter [Windows]

Lisa Phifer
VP Core Competence, Inc.

A Low-Cost NT Mail Server for ISPs
Vircom 's VOP Mail is an SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 Internet mail server for Windows 9x/NT/2000 operating systems. The ISP edition of VOP Mail 4.2 is $750.

VOP Mail supports RADIUS authentication, enabling integration with the most popular ISP user database. (Vircom also sells a full-featured RADIUS Server starting at $995.) For those who don't use RADIUS, VOP Mail supports authentication against LDAP, NT SAM, and ODBC users databases, and can act as an LDAP server itself. For increased security, VOP Mail supports client authentication methods like CRAM-MD5 and SCRAM-MD5, with a DLL plug-in for adding authentication methods like S/Key.

Using SQL Server and ODBC, VOP Mail can interface with ISP billing packages like RODOPI, Platypus, ISP-Power, Internet Back-Office-Billing, Hawk-I, Emerald, and Worldgroup. Integrating with back-end billing systems can mean greater operational efficiency for ISPs.

VOP Mail includes many other features of interest to ISPs, such as virtual domain support, anti-spamming features, list server support, flexible multi-level quotas with automated expiry/cleanup, and command line utilities for making volume changes. VOP Mail Web provides a browser-based mail client with multi-lingual support, customized pages, ads, and banners.

According to Vircom, VOP Mail can support up to 25,000 mailboxes on a Pentium 400, and up to 250,000 mailboxes on a single dual or quad-CPU Pentium with RAID or dedicated file server. Costas Zividis, Systems Manager at Athens Remote Systems, is still excited about VOP Mail after using it to support 500 heavy-use virtual domains for the past two years. "This product is what an ISP wants: stable, supports standards, and performs well under pressure," says Zividis.
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Heterogeneous Multi-Server Clusters
In February, Stalker Software announced a new "Super-Symmetric Dynamic Cluster" version of its high-end CommuniGate Pro mail server for Unix, Linux and NT platforms. According to Stalker, this upgrade allows CommuniGate Pro to support several million mailboxes in a heterogeneous multi-server cluster.

CommuniGate Pro is an SMTP/POP3/IMAP4r1 mail server that runs on an extensive collection of 18 platforms, including Solaris, Windows, Linux, MacOS, FreeBSD, BSDI, AIX, HP/UX, SCO, and OS/400. CommuniGate Pro supports virtual domains, shared mailboxes, mailing lists, a customizable "WebMail" browse client, anti-spam features, message filtering, automated processing rules, and SSL/TLS secured connections. For further detail, see Kevin Reichard's ServerWatch review of CommuniGate.

CommuniGate Pro is a high-end solution: an ISP license starts at $4,999 for 30,000 accounts, topping out at $29,999 for an unlimited number of accounts.

CommuniGate Pro clusters consist of mail servers organized into front-end and back-end server pools. Front-end servers focus on mail relay and SSL encryption tasks, while back-end servers carry out all other server functions through shared access to domain and account information. Clusters are defined per protocol. It is also possible to create a symmetric cluster in which every CommuniGate Pro operates as both a front and back-end server.

Previously, CommuniGate Pro clusters were static: every account being served by a single dedicated back-end server. With "Super-Symmetric Dynamic Clusters," back-end cluster members can now share data using account-level synchronization rather than OS or file system-level locking. This account-level synchronization scheme provides non-locking simultaneous access to all mailboxes served by the cluster. This innovation speeds processing, increases overall system stability, and provides high-availability access to all accounts even if a back-end server fails.
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Unified Messaging Provider's Choice
Rockliffe's MailSite 4 DataCenter is a carrier-grade SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 mail server for Windows NT and 2000 platforms. Rockliffe sells MailSite 4 DataCenter to ASPs, ISPs, portals, wireless providers, and unified messaging providers—all markets where lower total cost of ownership and ease of administration are important. MailSite 4 DataCenter supports an unlimited number of users and lists for a license fee of $1 per user. An enterprise version that supports up to 50,000 users runs $3,995.

ASP CoolEmail offers unified messaging—toll-free access to email, fax and phone messages—using Rockliffe's MailSite to support a half million users on a single NT server. According to CoolEMail founder Robert Newman, Rockliffe offers the robustness he needs, at a price he can live with. "Rockliffe runs with our SQL Server database flawlessly and has minimized our downtime. The only solutions I found that would scale to the same degree were UNIX-based, but prices were starting around $5 per mailbox, which was not an option for a subscription-free service provider like CoolEMail," said Newman.

For reliability, MailSite stores account information in an SQL database: either Microsoft SQL 7 or Compaq Non-Stop SQL. Its message store and user database can be distributed across physical servers to further improve performance and scalability.

Rockliffe's customizable browser-based mail client, MailSite Express, includes native support for a panoply of languages, including English, Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Turkish, Bulgarian, Indonesian, and Portuguese. According to Fabian Lucchi, president of Infomaniak Network, a Swiss ISP, "We were able to brand MailSite Express in record breaking time, hosting web e-mail in multiple languages out of the box with no additional changes."
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