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MailSite continues to support POP version 3, SMTP and IMAP version 4 through its 32-bit, multithreaded architecture. Although LDAP support was not included in the beta version, Rockliffe says it will be in the shipping version of the product.

In the lab, the performance of MailSite's user administration features degraded as the user base grew, but client access to e-mail via SMTP and POP3 remained responsive. MailSite 3.0 is a viable solution for simple e-mail and list management needs from a user perspective, though it may be slightly more time consuming for administrative use.

MailSite 3.0 runs on 32-bit Windows and requires a 486 with Windows95/98 or Windows NT 3.5.1/4.0 with a minimum of 15 MB of hard drive space.

Let's Get Ready To Rock I installed a beta version of MailSite on a Windows NT 4.0 Server with 128 MB of RAM. Using Rockliffe's thorough manual, I set up a default domain and added the proper records to the local DNS server. I then created a few accounts through MailSite's configuration console and tested them both locally and via the Internet. You can manage multiple domains through the same interface, making MailSite an effective tool for administering e-mail and handling mailing lists for Web-hosting sites.

I used MailSite's Web interface to manage accounts and mailing lists, using both the Java and HTML "consoles." The HTTP management facility lets you manage e-mail accounts, mailing lists and domain configurations. The HTML e-mail console and list moderation operations are performed via CGI scripts.

Using ODBC (Open Database Connectivity), MailSite establishes and authenticates users against a multitude of databases containing user names and passwords. Improved security measures for protection from spam mail also are part of the administrative features. You can ban individual addresses, domains or use reverse DNS lookups to validate e-mail addresses.

Balancing the Load Using one of MailSite's many command-line utilities for managing e-mail accounts, I set up a batch file to create 150,000 registry-based e-mail accounts with minimal effort. I then wrote a small Java application to simulate virtual SMTP and POP3 clients and distributed it to several workstations. Each application simulated more than 100 clients; the process entailed connecting to MailSite's SMTP server, sending an e-mail, connecting to the POP3 server and checking if the user had e-mail to retrieve. MailSite responded with alacrity during each step. Access times were more than acceptable in all scenarios--and the server's CPU did not appear even remotely stressed. With more than 500 concurrent users, access times for both sending and receiving mail were between one and two seconds consistently.

However, while user e-mail access via MailSite was swift, administrative access with more than 150,000 users in a single domain was painful. I installed the software on a dual Pentium II 333-MHz server and still encountered slow access to the mailbox list with an extremely large number of configured e-mail accounts. Even without users utilizing e-mail services, I couldn't access the HTML or Java administrative console remotely without causing the server to consume 100 percent of its resources. Administrative performance became an issue after about 30,000 users.

Accessing the mailbox list via the console was a slow process, taking almost five minutes to load. Once the user list was loaded, individual account administration was much smoother. Access times for administration, both remote and local, were much shorter with a smaller number of accounts. Rockliffe is addressing MailSite's performance, but says that most customers supporting a large number of users facilitate management via the product's command-line tools. Indeed, these tools improved performance dramatically, but a well-performing GUI application would enhance MailSite's appeal.

Lori MacVittie is a senior systems engineer with Application Software Technologies. Send your comments on this article to her at lori@nandgate.com.