TS mail server

[Eugene van Rooyen]

We are setting up a small office with 1X TS (W2K3), and 3 Thin
clients, all of whom are connected to the server via wireless AP's.
The server is connected to the Internet via ISDN dial-up.

At the moment all 3 users just connect to the Inernet (and collect
email {POP3}) individually. This works fine, but would be better if we
could have a mail server collecting email for the accounts, and so the
users could have "internal" email as well. I tried a product called
602 Lansuite, but that wasn't too TS friendly.

Can anyone suggest an alternative app (or procedure) for doing this?
Also I would like to have some sort of security on that connection; do
I just enable the connection firewall on that conenction?

I know it's not an ideal setup, but that's all we have to work with at
the moment.

Tx in advance,

Eugene

 

[Alex K. Angelopoulos [MVP]]

At the moment all 3 users just connect to the Inernet (and collect
email {POP3}) individually. This works fine, but would be better if we
could have a mail server collecting email for the accounts, and so the
users could have "internal" email as well. I tried a product called
602 Lansuite, but that wasn't too TS friendly.

If I understand you correctly - you want to install the email service on the
server itself - no, it won't be better, it will give the server a
split-personality problem.

For a 3-person office, there should be almost no overhead from large email
messages - after all, the files can easily be shared. The expenses -
decreased performance due to the email service, initial configuration costs,
and secondary breakage issues requiring ongoing maintenance - are big; if
they do have speed problems for email access, it would be better and cheaper
to upgrade to DSL.

You may want to look at a couple of other options if the problems are
different from that.

(1) If their ISP is a problem - not responsive to issues like password
changes, etc - see if they have a current Internet presence. Most companies
that provide paid web hosting/maintenance also provide a nominal number of
free email accounts for their clients. If that's not an option and your
company is an IT vendor, I would suggest trying to roll them into YOUR mail
system; you can charge a minor fee that is well below the cost to them of
their own system, and strengthen the ties to your organization.

(2) If they just really, really, really don't want to send things out over
the Internet, you may want to investigate something like the older Microsoft
Workgroup Mail. If I recall correctly, it ran on NT4 even, and as a
flat-file system you may be able to use it on the TS itself. If not, an old
box they have with NT4 should be a decent workgroup server. Then they can
host their local email on a local system.

 

[arno]

Hi Eugene,

would be better if we
could have a mail server collecting email for the accounts, and so the
users could have "internal" email as well.

have a look at
http://www.proxyplus.net

It can dial-up for you and send mail internally. You can install it on
any machine in the network or on your TS. (And think about getting
DSL.)

regards

arno