outbound mail throttling

[mattjustin]

Im trying to setup exim to rate limit 20 connections per domain (ie..yahoo,gmail,hotmail..ect) and also limit each connection to 10 emails per domain per connection.

can someone please shed some light what i need to do because these days if you send too much mail at a specific provider they will block you.

thanks

[cPanelTristan]

There are discussions on the exim mailing list about trying to perform this task. Here is one such discussion:

Re: [exim] Rate limit Outgoing mail based on recipient domain

I would suggest posting on the exim mailing list if you cannot get a working solution upon reviewing the discussions there.

[egillette]

Hey Tristan,

I took a look at that code. . .is that code supposed to be implemented in exim.pl??

It was kinda hard to understand since the poster didn't say anything about the code pre-requisite to posting it. . .

[cPanelTristan]

These are in the WHM > Exim Configuration > Advanced Configuration area for the routers section and the transports section. If you aren't certain what to use, again I suggest exim.org and their excellent mailing list with very helpful people who know exim incredibly well.

[egillette]

Tristan,

Thanks man -- I got it working!

[anand]

Tristan,

Thanks man -- I got it working!

Would you mind posting on how exactly you got it working ?

[egillette]

Anand,

Actually it was short-lived. It only worked temporarily as a review of Exim's logs showed it was actually dumping the excess messages, so I removed the code, and put Exim back the way it was. I guess we'll both have to wait on cPanel to produce a way for us to do this easier, as I have clients who like to send out e-mail messages to their lists, and to help alleviate the pressure on the receiving servers (i.e. Yahoo, AOL, etc), I was trying to limit the number of connections to those servers -- I also have found that throttling outbound messages in this fashion makes it so that Yahoo/AOL/Gmail, etc don't blacklist you or rate-limit your connections. Hopefully I'll find a solution (been looking a solution offered by Port25.com at the moment), or cPanel will soon implement this functionality inherently. I'll keep you posted on my outcome either way.

[anand]

ooh ok.

Thanks for letting me know.

We have many clients who had high mailing requirements, but due to exim issues, we have many problems as well.

Port25 indeed has a very good solution, the only issue being, they charge heavily for it, since no one else provides similar software

[egillette]

Anand,

I agree -- the cost of their solution is not only heavy, but it is a yearly recurring cost at that.

Honestly, that's been my *biggest* barrier to entry for their product, otherwise I'd have implemented it long ago, and been done with it. =0)

Anyway -- if I come across anything notable that is relatively inexpensive (or no cost at all), I'll come back and post here as I know you're looking for something as well.

If you find something, let me know as I'll most likely be interested!

[cPanelTristan]

Have either of you tried the exim mailing list as I mentioned previously?

I suggest exim.org and their excellent mailing list with very helpful people who know exim incredibly well.

I've never seen anyone post on their mailing list who hasn't gotten one or more useful responses. You need to be very exact and detailed when posting there to get the fastest and best assistance. Please post a link to the mailing list post once you've created one so we can watch it.

[anand]

Thanks Eric. Will do.

[anand]

Have either of you tried the exim mailing list as I mentioned previously?

I've never seen anyone post on their mailing list who hasn't gotten one or more useful responses. You need to be very exact and detailed when posting there to get the fastest and best assistance. Please post a link to the mailing list post once you've created one so we can watch it.

I have tried that route earlier some times, however the way cpanel has exim setup, it makes it very difficult to implement something which they recommend.

[egillette]

Hey Tristan,

Yeah, I looked it over, and actually implemented it, but it didn't work quite the way I expected.

I'd rather wait until you guys create the functionality.

[Twinings216]

egillette wrote: "it was actually dumping the excess messages"

That doesn't sounds right. Does it? Would exim be designed to "dump" messages after it reached a threshold for serialization? It sounds catastrophic. It's supposed to send a certain number of messages on a connection, and then close the connection, and open a new connection.

[egillette]

Well the problem is that the function was designed to dump the excess messages over the threshold. Literally. No freeze, just straight up delete.