On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, Greg A. Woods wrote:
...
> get enough network connectivity into them. Why AOL think they need 55
> in-bound MX hosts just for their piddly 2-3 million users I cannot
> imagine. Perhaps they're using PCs as servers.
A think a big problem must be phantom mail. AOL does not do immediate
verification of local recipients. Most mailing lists are poorly
maintained so bounces go straight in the trash. If someone is on a
mailing list, and they close their account, the listserv will continue to
send e-mail indefinitely. The longer your system has been up the more
such stuff will build up.
A story: I recently set up a server, and re-used a hostname that I used
over a year before. This hostname was used as an e-mail domain for about
5000 mailboxes, which were moved elsewhere. The hostname had not even
existed in DNS for the last 8 months. But within in two hours of setting
this server up, it already started getting mail!
Another AOL issue: downtime. Remember that big AOL outage where they
lost all Internet connectivity for several hours? They probably designed
the SMTP inbound system to be able to handle 10 times the peak reception
rate to handle such outages. The AOL email admins probably used the
network problems as justification to get funding for some serious empire
building (I can just imagine the e-mail guys bragging to the usenet guys
that have more servers!)
> --
> Greg A. Woods
>
> +1 416 443-1734 VE3TCP <gwoods@???> <robohack!woods>
> Planix, Inc. <woods@???>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
>
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