hallett@gemed (Jeff Hallett x5163 ) (10/19/89)
Howdy.
The plan is to get a buncha Macs (Mac IIci) on managers' and
secretaries' desks and allow them to still communicate via email with
the software developers working on Sun workstations. We are trying to
figure out whether to use MS Mail or CD Quickmail (these are our
options because we will be using one of the mail bridges Cayman ships
to run on the Gatorbox).
I'm basically looking some info on MS Mail:
1. Does the MS Mail server require a dedicated Mac? If not is there
a problem with running it on the Appleshare-serving Mac?
2. How well does the nameserver work? Basically, if Bob has a Unix
account and Mary the secretary wants to send him mail, how transparent
is Bob's location to her? Does she need to know some long path or can
she do something like "To: Bob" and the nameserver will fill in the
rest (e.g. like sendmail.cf). Can a mail neophyte work it?
3. Are custom forms supported as part of MS Mail?
4. How much active support is required? The issue here is stability.
Provided that the Gatorbox doesn't go down and the Mac running the
admin software stays up, how much people-time is needed to support
software functions (e.g. adding new users, changing nameserver
addresses, etc).
5. How fast is it?
6. Does the Mac-side software deliver to a single machine (e.g. Bob
at zone "A", node #42) or does it require a public arrangement (like
/usr/spool/mail on a server)?
Now, if some brave soul could respond, substituting "CE
Quickmail" for "MS Mail", I'd really be set.
Thanks much in advance. You can email me and I can summarize, or, if
people feel that others would benefit, just post-on.
--
Jeffrey A. Hallett, PET Software Engineering
GE Medical Systems, W641, PO Box 414, Milwaukee, WI 53201
(414) 548-5163 : EMAIL - hallett@gemed.ge.com
"Your logic was impeccable Captain. We are in grave danger."jln@accuvax.nwu.edu (John Norstad) (10/19/89)
In article <1255@mrsvr.UUCP> hallett@gemed.ge.com (Jeff Hallett x5163 ) writes: > >Howdy. > >The plan is to get a buncha Macs (Mac IIci) on managers' and >secretaries' desks and allow them to still communicate via email with >the software developers working on Sun workstations. We are trying to >figure out whether to use MS Mail or CD Quickmail (these are our >options because we will be using one of the mail bridges Cayman ships >to run on the Gatorbox). The mail bridge that Caymans sells is the same one that StarNine sells. It doesn't run on the Gatorbox, it runs on the mail server Mac (although TCP/IP traffic does go through the Gatorbox). >I'm basically looking some info on MS Mail: I haven't used MS Mail, but I have used QuickMail with the StarNine bridge. The following comments are about that combination. >1. Does the MS Mail server require a dedicated Mac? If not is there >a problem with running it on the Appleshare-serving Mac? No, it doesn't require a dedicated Mac, although we do use a dedicated Mac SE 2/40 as our mail server. You can run it on your Appleshare file server if you wish. >2. How well does the nameserver work? Basically, if Bob has a Unix >account and Mary the secretary wants to send him mail, how transparent >is Bob's location to her? Does she need to know some long path or can >she do something like "To: Bob" and the nameserver will fill in the >rest (e.g. like sendmail.cf). Can a mail neophyte work it? The bridge can use your regular Internet name service to locate target machines. For Internet mail the QuickMail user simply types the regular Internet style address (e.g, jblow@flunku.edu). Internet addresses can be entered in a QuickMail directory, which makes it even easier. Definitely usable by neophytes. On problem with name service is that the StarNine bridge does not recognize MX records, which can cause some mail to be delivered to the wrong machine or not delivered at all. This is really a problem with Apple's MacTCP name resolver, which does not permit generalized query operations. At our site we've solved this problem by directing all mail to a default well-connected UNIX box, which then forward the mail to the proper destination. If you don't have Internet name service, you can use the MacTCP "hosts" file on the server to list all the known destination hosts and their IP addresses. >3. Are custom forms supported as part of MS Mail? QuickMail supports custom forms. My biggest complaint about QuickMail forms is that the row of icons at the top and the header area take up too much precious screen real estate, leaving only a few lines of message text in the scrolling field. This problem is compounded by the fact that on my Mac II the scroll bars are much too fast. All QuickMail forms are the size of the standard small Mac screen, without grow boxes. It's very annoying to have a big screen and not be able to use it. >4. How much active support is required? The issue here is stability. >Provided that the Gatorbox doesn't go down and the Mac running the >admin software stays up, how much people-time is needed to support >software functions (e.g. adding new users, changing nameserver >addresses, etc). If everything works properly, little support is required. Adding new users is easy. We've had problems with server crashes at our site, and we suspect that the problem is our FastPath 2 upgraded to a FastPath 4. I've talked to several people who use either direct Ethernet connections or true FastPath 4 boxes, and they haven't reported crashes. Initial installation can be a bit complicated, and requires a networking guru who knows about AppleTalk, UNIX, MacTCP, and so on. >5. How fast is it? Performance is quite adequate at our site, using a dedicated Mac SE 2/40 as a server on localtalk and a Kinetics bridge to our campus internet. >6. Does the Mac-side software deliver to a single machine (e.g. Bob >at zone "A", node #42) or does it require a public arrangement (like >/usr/spool/mail on a server)? Incoming mail is delivered to the server, which is an SMTP peer host from the point of view of the Internet. The QuickMail DA on the user's Mac gets the mail over the AppleTalk net from the server. From the user's point of view it seems like mail is being delivered directly to his/her machine, but this is an illusion. >Now, if some brave soul could respond, substituting "CE >Quickmail" for "MS Mail", I'd really be set. I have one very major additional complaint about the QuickMail/StarNine combination. Enclosed files on outgoing mail are converted to AppleSingle format and uuencoded. If the recipient also has the QuickMail/StarNine combination this is great, because the bridge automatically uudecodes and unconverts the enclosure. But if the recipient does not have the QuickMail/StarNine combination the enclosure is all but unreadable. Thus it's not really possible to ship Mac files around the Internet using the defacto standard Stuffit/BinHex techniques. What we need is a way to tell the bridge to attach a simple text file to the end of a message without doing any sort of conversion at all, or a way to tell it to use BinHex encoding instead of AppleSinge/uuencode encoding. At the Interop conference the StarNine folks told me they were aware of this problem. Hope this helps. The QuickMail/StarNine combination shows promise and is interesting, but it needs some work. John Norstad Northwestern University jln@acns.nwu.edu