[comp.mail.uucp] Techniques for SMTP batching

lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) (11/23/90)

chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:

>>For incoming polls, give the site a login "shell" that:
>>	1) Kicks off the mail batcher, then
>>	2) exec's uucico

>This is an interesting approach, but it may be counterproductive if
>you desire to increase batch size despite frequent polls for incoming
>mail.

Well, I figure that if the remote site has called, you might as
well make it worth their while and send along whatever mail is
queued for them. 

-- 
    Lyndon Nerenberg  VE6BBM / Computing Services / Athabasca University
        {alberta,cbmvax,mips}!atha!lyndon || lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca
                    Packet: ve6bbm@ve6mc [.ab.can.na]
      The only thing open about OSF is their mouth.  --Chuck Musciano

greg@cheers.Bungi.COM (Greg Onufer) (11/26/90)

lyndon@cs.athabascau.ca (Lyndon Nerenberg) writes:
>chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>>>For incoming polls, give the site a login "shell" that:
>>>	1) Kicks off the mail batcher, then
>>>	2) exec's uucico
>>This is an interesting approach, but it may be counterproductive if
>>you desire to increase batch size despite frequent polls for incoming
>>mail.

Then don't poll frequently--- first minute costs are going to kill you
anyways if the call is long distance.  Of course, it all depends on
what you are trying to optimize. 

>Well, I figure that if the remote site has called, you might as
>well make it worth their while and send along whatever mail is
>queued for them. 

Exactly.  My machine 'cheers' calls 'daver' (on occasion) and 'daver'
will batch and compress mail waiting for me.  If I don't call, then
'daver' will batch mail sometime during the early morning hours and
call me then.  This is a combination of Smail 3.1 and Sendmail
5.65+IDA.  I perform compressed SMTP batching with Sendmail via a new
mailer definition and two short shell scripts (one sendmail calls, the
other makes batches and ships them off).  It's not very hard and it is
fairly effective.

Cheers!greg