"AK" <aktrader2@excite.com> wrote in message
news:uOWdnQZzH4k0ICvZnZ2dnUVZ_sSdnZ2d@comcast.com. ..
> Jason wrote:
>
>> Hi. This post may digress on to a discussion that doesn't relate
>> directly to qmail, so I'm just looking for quick pointers... Nothing
>> to specific if the solution doesn't relate to Q-Mail... Does anybody
>> have any ideas for implementing the following solution?
>>
>> I want to make a standalone system that functions as a pop3 proxying
>> device for thousands of users, connected with hundreds of domains, that
>> are hosted on 1-5 pop3 servers.
>>
>> The idea is that email users would connect to this pop3-proxy
>> the pop3 proxy would send username/password queries to all of the 5 pop3
>> servers; whichever auth succeeds for that username/password/realm is
>> then used to complete the transaction.
>> the pop3-proxy would then make a full-blown pop3 connection to that
>> server, proxy the commands from the customer on to the respective pop3
>> server, and proxy the responses back to the client, and terminates the
>> connection when the client terminates/timeouts.
>>
>> The idea being that I will then modify my DNS records to point all client
>> pop3 requests to point to this new server. I understand that this would
>> cause a huge amount of overhead because up to 5 connections would be made
>> for every pop3 connection, but thats a sacrifice in performance that has
>> to be made for the completion of this project.
>>
>> We'd also have to do a similiar thing with SMTP, but because SMTP is a
>> lot easier to manage because it is entirely based on relaying, I think i
>> can cross that bridge when I get there.
>>
>> Does anybody have any ideas in this regard?
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> -- Jason
>
> You are looking for something well beyond the capability of a proxy. Yo
>
> Are there other options available to you?
>
> have a look at the vpopmail or qmail ldap implementation.
>
> You should consider consolidating your infrustracture such that you have
> redundancy as well as a "single" point of access to every thing.
>
> Instead of trying to access five different systems, you could as part of
> the application setup a mechanism that will check based on the realm to
> which server it needs to connect and proceed from there.
>
> AK

Thanks for your suggestions, but I think this is the only way that can
accomplish what I am going for.

The idea here is that I am actually in the process of combining two
different mail platforms over into 1 new one, and the conversion process
would best be done gradually (instead of doing the conversion in a batch all
at once, which if done incorrectly, could lead to screwing myself bigtime).

As such, I need to be able to direct the traffic to whichever pop3 server
holds the mailbox for the specific user. If I can't do that, then I'm
looking at a big headache. :-/

If I have to, then I might even end up coding this project myself... which
I would probably release on sourceforge if I did... But I can see how a
tool like this could be a huge help to mail administrators everywhere who
are in a similiar situation... (ie... parent company combines with a
different one, and managmenet wants to homoginize mail platforms across the
enterprise).

-- Jason