A Detailed Overview

Post.Office^tm is a powerful e-mail server developed in strict adherence to the open standards and protocols of the Internet community. Bringing greater levels of efficiency, reliability, and flexibility to e-mail clients and administrators, Post.Office is designed to accommodate the ever-increasing demands of electronic mail systems. With strong emphasis on security, scalability, and ease-of-use, Post.Office sets the standard for e-mail server solutions.

Post.Office is a multi-platform solution for Windows NT and UNIX platforms, offering an integrated combination of tools and capabilities not found in any other e-mail server. Features such as Web forms interface, fully integrated List Manager, remote configuration, auto-reply, and integrated POP3, SMTP and Finger servers provide seamless connection to the Internet.

Powerful Built-in List Manager
Without the use of dedicated tools, creating and maintaining mailing lists is a cumbersome, time-consuming chore. Some mailing list management "solutions" entail clunky add-on programs—often from different vendors than the designers of the mail server package, with all the resulting integration and compatibility issues associated with multi-source configurations.

Post.Office is the clear alternative—its built-in List Manager is seamlessly integrated with the rest of the package, enabling unprecedented flexibility, control, and ease of use in this critical function. Operation is simple and elegant—all list-related operations can be performed through web interface or e-mail forms (or a combination of both).

Something for Everyone
After carefully researching the specific mailing list requirements of e-mail users, we’ve designed our List Manager capabilities to facilitate and simplify the process at every level of an e-mail service—from Postmaster to list owner to individual subscriber.

      For List Owners

• Easy to Configure and Maintain
• Web or e-mail interface for convenient:
• List Maintenance
• Message Moderation
• Posting Policies
• Subscription Policies
• Comprehensive configuration options
• Digest Schedules
• Address Attributes
• Message Formatting
• Automatic List Statistics Reports

      For Postmasters

• Powerful Security Features, including multi-level password protection
• Unlimited control over list attributes and policies
• Mail Server Management Tool Set for list creation and list limits specification, allowing Postmaster to control system resources and optimize mail server performance
• Delegation of list maintenance responsibilities to list owners

      For Subscribers

• Convenient web/e-mail interface
• Subscribe/unsubscribe from lists
• Specify delivery modes
• Flexible search function

Scaling to New Heights
E-mail systems have a habit of expanding beyond the original capacities envisioned at their initial implementation. Other e-mail server solutions simply stop functioning when they "max out." But expanding e-mail systems are no problem for Post.Office, with its ability to scale comfortably from as few as 10 user accounts up to 150,000 mailboxes per server (depending on configuration).

Security: A Serious Matter for Everyone
To accommodate the increasing concerns of security-conscious users, Post.Office has been designed to operate independently of the host computer system. It is, therefore, virtually impossible to compromise the main system security via the electronic mail program (a common risk with other e-mail servers).

      Other security features offered by Post.Office:

• Post.Office does not run with root privileges.
• Several password protection levels exist for configuration, account changes, and mail retrieval.
• Only an appropriate subset of forms is available to each user.
• On user form requests, a 4-field comparison is made with the account database to verify the user’s identity.
• User access can be restricted to specific domains or hosts.
• Users do not require a log-in account for the host computer.
• Warnings are automatically sent to the System Administrator in response to suspicious activity.

Anti-Spamming Safeguards
Curbing the proliferation of unsolicited e-mail or "spam" is one of the most requested solutions from e-mail administrators and users alike. While no technology exists to completely eliminate spamming, Post.Office includes security features to block major sources of spam penetration, and minimize the impact on system performance when it does occur. Safeguards include:

• An SMTP mail relay prevention feature that can be used to restrict the systems and/or users who may relay messages through Post.Office.
• A mail blocking feature that can be used to block the delivery of all mail from a particular system, domain, e-mail address, or user name. Because blocking by IP address causes Post.Office to refuse network connections from the specified system, this feature can also be used to prevent "denial of service" attacks.

Administration and Use: Simple Elegance
Post.Office was designed from the ground up for ease of use. Using web forms with simple fill-in-the-blank forms and pop-up options, and assisted by hypertext help links, Post.Office offers an uncomplicated, user-friendly interface for its basic operating functions. The web forms organize the interface into functional units for the Postmaster and local users, providing seamless navigation through the many Post.Office features. In fact, 99% of Post.Office administration is accomplished using these forms. Postmaster and clients alike benefit from the simplicity.

      More easy-to-use features:

• Learn as you go; simple instructions guide the way.
• No programming. No configuration files to edit. No unfamiliar syntax to memorize.
• Web browser and e-mail forms interface.
• Users may manage certain aspects of their own accounts, such as changing passwords and vacation messages.

Gain Control Over System Resources
Post.Office offers a variety of configuration options to more efficiently manage your system resources, including administrator-definable limits and parameters for:

• Concurrent SMTP and POP3 processes
• System-level and account-level POP3 mailbox size
• System-level message size
• Minimum free disk space

At Your Service, Wherever You Are!
Post.Office can be configured remotely from any computer via e-mail or World Wide Web forms. Flexibility is assured with Post.Office’s full compatibility with diverse network environments, including UNIX and Windows NT.

• System administrators can make changes from anywhere on the Internet.
• Administer Post.Office remotely from your machine of choice.

Auto-Reply: One Message Tells All
Post.Office has an Auto-Reply feature to address the needs of even the busiest users. With three settings to choose from— Vacation, Reply, and Echo—Post.Office can be instructed to issue a pre-set, automatic reply to senders, returning the incoming message or any chosen message as instructed.

Going on vacation? Set the Auto-Reply feature to Vacation mode and Post.Office will return your personalized notification to each new person who sends you e-mail while you’re away. Any mail they choose to send will be stored until you return. You can even direct Post.Office to forward mail to your specified address(es) while you’re away.

Need to get the word out? The "postmaster" can create an Auto-Reply account to disseminate information such as marketing materials, technical FAQs, or other general information. With the Reply setting, all inquiries to that special account will be sent the same response message.

Architecture. An Eye to the Future
The modular design of Post.Office delivers superb functionality with a series of built-in components and an infrastructure ready for the addition of more messaging tools as required to meet newly-adopted Internet standards, such as LDAP and IMAP. Post.Office will continue to be the leader in e-mail server technology, with clear-cut upgrade paths as the global use of Internet messaging expands exponentially.

Standards Conformance
The Post.Office mail system conforms to the standards listed in this section. Every effort has been made to verify that Post.Office conforms completely with the specifications to ensure interoperability.

The letters "RFC" in all of the standard names mean Request for Comments. These are published protocol standards based on work done by working groups in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Mail Transport Protocols

• RFC 821 J. Postel, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, August, 1982.
• RFC 822 D. Crocker, Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages, August, 1982.
• RFC 974 C. Partridge, Mail Routing and the Domain Name System, January, 1986.
• RFC 1123 R. Braden, Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support, October, 1989.
• RFC 1521 N. Borenstein, N. Freed, MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies, September, 1993.
• RFC 1651 J. Klensin, N. Freed, M. Rose, E. Stefferud, D. Crocker, SMTP Service Extensions, July 1994.
• RFC 1653 J. Klensin, N. Freed, K. Moore, SMTP Service Extension for Message Size Declaration, July 1994.

Mail Access Protocols

• RFC 1725 J. Myers, M. Rose, Post Office Protocol - Version 3, November, 1994.

Directory Services

• RFC 1288 D. Zimmerman, The Finger User Information Protocol, December, 1991.

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