Case Study From Stalker Software

Stalker Software presents the success of its implementation of the CommuniGate Pro e-mail system at major ISP MegaPath Networks.

by Joanne Menapace [April 22, 2002]
Joanne Menapace works in marketing and communications at Stalker Software. She has been in the messaging and collaboration industry for over four years.

MegaPath Networks Inc. is a business-class broadband access and network services provider that supplies high-speed access to the Internet and private networks, as well as network security, remote access, e-mail, eCommerce, and website solutions. MegaPath currently serves small, mid-sized, and home-based businesses, as well as enterprise telecommuter markets and distributed enterprises in 150 metropolitan areas nationwide.

Challenge
Sean P. Crandall has mega plans for his messaging services. The VP of Engineering at MegaPath currently supports over 65,000 e-mail accounts across 3,100 domains, a large system by anyone's standards. The system currently handles approximately 1.5 million POP requests and moves 250,000 e-mail messages per day. But Crandall must look at growth potential way beyond that, to meet current system requirements and allow for future expansion. He reports, "we were looking for a solution that would take us to the 1 million mail box number."

Solution
Like many cost conscious ISPs, MegaPath initially tried to keep costs low with an open source e-mail platform. However, the company soon realized this was not a viable long-term solution as business continued to grow. System management problems started occurring and the ISP began having problems with corrupted mailboxes. The system was rapidly becoming very expensive to maintain.

Searching for a reliable solution that could support future growth, MegaPath contacted Stalker Software. According to Crandall, they chose CommuniGate Pro for a variety of reasons. But mostly because, "It is easy to use and implement. It had all of the features and services already built in that we wanted to offer at the time (POP and SMTP) and all of the features that we were thinking about implementing (web e-mail, IMAP)."

Perhaps most importantly, CommuniGate Pro solved MegaPath's problems by providing those services on a solid platform. MegaPath is known for a high standard of customer care, and continues to earn top ratings according to industry reviews.

System architecture
Initially, MegaPath set up CommuniGate Pro on a single Dell PowerEdge server running Linux. The company then moved to a single Dell server running FreeBSD, and using a Network Appliance F740 for the network attached data storage. CommuniGate Pro runs on over 20 platforms so the company had no restrictions when the decision was made to migrate.

The current MegaPath configuration is a 2 front-end and 2 back-end Dynamic Cluster. The servers are from Dell and run FreeBSD 4.4 on the front-end and RedHat 7.2 on the back-end, with a pair of clustered Net App F740's for data storage. In front of the cluster, Foundry ServerIron XL load balancers sit behind four Cisco PIX 525 firewalls. Everything has something to failover to, providing 100 percent uptime.

As the system grows, MegaPath plans to add servers as needed. The CommuniGate Pro Dynamic Cluster architecture allows MegaPath to add or remove servers at will, without any disruption to its customers.

Administration
In addition to the built-in Web-based administration interface, MegaPath used the CLI (command line interface) of CommuniGate Pro to simplify what could have been a complicated process. It created a general Web interface to manage all of the aspects of setting up e-mail for a new customer. Using only one simple interface, an administrator configures the primary DNS servers, secondary DNS servers, and CommuniGate Pro server. The back end scripts take care of the work on the servers themselves, saving time and money for the administrative staff.

Results
With its built in IMAP, POP3, SMTP, HTTP, ACAP, and LDAP services, CommuniGate Pro allows MegaPath to support whatever its customers want, with the reliability they have come to expect.

The customers have different requirements based on network and connectivity. In terms of e-mail, many end users are stationary and standard POP accounts work fine for them. Others are "road warriors" and thus need mobile access to their e-mail which the Web interface supports nicely.

As new customers come on board with new sets of requirements, Crandall feels that MegaPath is ready. "At this point, we believe that we have the base to support 1 million mailboxes."

Ongoing support
In Sean Crandall's opinion, Stalker Software's support has been "excellent."

He enjoys telling this story that "sealed the deal" for them to purchase CommuniGate Pro. "Originally, when we asked about the costs of the service contracts for the software, we were told by Stalker that they would not sell it to us because we would not need it. We were thinking that they were crazy or the software must be so good that they were able to be that arrogant. We guessed the latter and have not been disappointed."

—End