On Fri, 6 Jan 1995 22:38:05 -0600 Winship <[log in to unmask]> said: >If I need a really quick answer for things like query, scan etc. I will >tn3270 to our error account. Since it is at UBVM I get the answer very >quickly (local users get priority). Actually, the difference is that local users don't go via SMTP, and IBM's SMTP software is a dog. It's an interested case for us computer freaks, actually, because in spite of being a dog, it uses algorithms that scale up. So you need about 5 times more cycles and I/O than you should to make a delivery, but then if you throw in 10 times as many cycles, you can get about 10 times as much work done. The IBM tradition - a bigger box solves your problem. Many other SMTPs are just the opposite. They're very fast, but then at some point you start needing 10 times as many resources to do twice as much work. So you can buy the largest box there is, and you still can't get past a certain capacity. The only solution is to run 10 smaller boxes in parallel and figure a way to somehow spread the traffic between them. In some cases it's easy, in others it's next to impossible. Eric