The rate limit is intended to solve the problem where you have some kind of announcement going out to a bunch of people, and the announcement invites them to click on a link, for instance to buy something before the offer expires ;-) The link goes to a modern web site with a bunch of bandwidth-intensive eye candy and you want to make sure that there is enough available bandwidth for these web accesses. If the web accesses are so slow that people give up, you have just shot yourself in the foot. Another common scenario is a large low-priority newsletter, for instance a staff newsletter that is basically a big PDF file going to every employee. It makes no difference if people read it at 9am or 1pm. You can use the rate limit to prevent the big PDF newsletter from eating up all the bandwidth. The rate limit is not designed to relieve the MTA, only your bandwidth.

  Eric