Event
Summary
Demo 2000, Indian Wells, CA - Sendmail, Inc., the provider of the ubiquitous
Sendmail Internet Mail platform for e-communications, applications and services,
announced Open Source sendmail 8.10, the largest feature release in the 20 year
history of the mail transfer agent (MTA), which routes the vast majority of
mail traffic across the Internet.
Designed
to satisfy the accelerating demands of Internet communications, sendmail 8.10
now includes SMTP authentication and support for the lightweight directory access
protocol (LDAP) and multiple queues. Nearly 5,000 users participated in the
beta testing of the new version to ensure its quality and performance. (Source:
Sendmail, Inc.).
Market
Impact
During
sendmail 8.10's development, over 5,000 beta users tested the product to reveal
any issues and recommend improvements prior to the products final release. Revision
8.10 has improved in three key areas: security, integration and performance.
Release 8.10 provides support for multi queuing, which allows mail to be transferred
via multiple queues, allowing for a pseudo-form of "load balancing". The concept
of multiple mail delivery queues allows for a solid message processing performance
in sendmail. Release 8.10 also incorporates Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPV6),
which allows support for trillions of hosts.
Security
has been revamped and improved to protect an organization against spam. A new
feature called " SMTP Authentication" has been added, which forces a spammer
to provide a password prior to relay. DNS Blackhole capabilities have been configured
to block mail from known spammers found on the Internet's black list. Release
8.10 includes a relay control mechanism, which identifies and purges large recipient
base emails, a common technique among spammers.
Sendmail
has released a shrink-wrapped commercial version of sendmail 8.10. The package
is simply being called " Sendmail Switch". The product is attractively priced
at $99 (USD) as an introductory promotion into the marketplace. The retail version
includes a graphical user interface (GUI) and is slated to ship to market in
March of 2000 (probability 95%).
User
Recommendations
Current
Sendmail product users will be pleased with the expected stability, in addition
to the enhanced LDAP support, allowing for integration into all environments.
The enhanced anti-spam measures will be a breath of fresh air for ISP network
administrators struggling to keep spam down to a minimum.
The
multiple mail queues are a welcome addition to any environment. Faster processing
and routing of messages is always a serious plus. If you are either looking
to upgrade your existing sendmail installation, or implement a new message transfer
agent (MTA), take a look at sendmail 8.10 .