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Postmaster,
Who Are You?
By Noel Laam
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This is not the head of
the Post Office. When you send/receive your e-mail, lots of work
has been done behind the scene. The e-mail is scanned for virus,
returned with error message if the recipient address is invalid,
and answered with auto-reply if the recipient is on leave etc. Do
you know who is taking care of all these?
Postmaster is the e-mail system administrator,
a valid standard e-mail account that must exist for any standardised
system in accordance with the Internet E-mail Standard. In any established
organisation like the CityU, the account must be maintained by e-mail
specialist(s) and it handles a lot more work than that described
above.
Day-to-day Work
The postmaster of CityU (postmaster@cityu.edu.hk)
is responsible for sending error report when an e-mail message fails
to reach its recipient. There may be many reasons why it cannot
be delivered, and the error report states clearly what causes the
problem. On average 500-2000 error reports are generated daily,
and a mail header copy of error reports is sent to the postmaster
for reference. After studying the pattern of these error reports,
the postmaster will take some samples, usually several dozens, and
examine them in details. If users have questions on the errors made,
they can simply reply to the error report and the postmaster will
answer them shortly.
Apart from answering all kinds of enquiries
which may reach a dozen a day, handling complaints is also a major
job for the postmaster. Complaints may come from different directions
(internal or external) and in different forms. Typical ones are
concerning e-mail spamming (one mail message to many recipients),
e-mail bomb (hundreds/thousands of mail messages to one recipients),
mail relay (mainly refers to the malicious mail sent via the CityU
server that bears the domain name cityu.edu.hk), network abuse (hacking,
unauthorised PC scanning, generating redundant broadcast) etc. Once
such complaint is received, the postmaster begins investigation
immediately and informs the department(s) concerned. As soon as
the cause is found out, a reply will be sent to the person who lodges
the complaint to give him/her a brief report of the case, and appropriate
actions will be taken if necessary.
Virus is the by-product of modern advanced
technology. It is capable of destroying the mail it attaches to,
or even the hard disk or system of others if it is spread. In addition
to sending virus alert to users whenever a new species or variant
is discovered, all incoming and outgoing mail is scanned to ensure
it is virus-free before its delivery. However, if virus does exist
in any mail, the users (both sender and recipient) will be informed
right away and the contaminated mail deleted at once.
The postmaster also regularly monitors
the performance of the mail server as well as the mail system to
make sure that they are working properly, and delivers auto-reply
(e.g. for those who are on holiday) or auto-forward (e.g. for those
who left the CityU) messages for users.
What Adds Extra Workloads to the
Postmaster?
E-mail is a very handy facility for
communication. Exactly because it is so convenient, users tend to
use it frequently and sometimes they may cause serious consequences
to the e-mail system with their undesirable habits without being
aware. As a result, the postmaster has to spend lots of extra effort
to rectify the situations. Below are some very common habits of
e-mail users that may devastatingly affect the mail server performance:
Oversize mail not only jams the e-mail
path, risks rejection from recipient’s mailbox, causes interruption
in transmission, but also induces unnecessary workload for mail
server owing to the automatic retries made by the e-mail client
software and the need for virus scan.
When users initiate mass e-mailing
(one mail message to many recipients), it is rather common to
find that some e-mail addresses are unreachable. The postmaster
will try sending it for 3 days, which means the sending queue
will be lengthened, a lot more resources of the mail server wasted,
and a warning for each non-delivery given to the sender for his/her
information. All these simply add up to the traffic of the e-mail
server and will definitely slow down its performance.
- Leaving Too Much Mail on Server
for Too Long
If a user does not clear the mailboxes
regularly, too much mail will be accumulated on the mail server.
Apart from exceeding the server quota, this will cause the users
to spend longer time to check mail and breakdown/error may result
frequently.
- Storing Too Much Mail
in One Mail Box
It is always recommended not to
hold too much mail in one mail box (e.g. the Outbox) so as to
limit the damage when a mail box is corrupted. Therefore, it
is better for users to categorise the mail into different mail
box, or simply save it in other places, say in the hard disk
of their PCs.
What's the Difference Between CityU and Other Commercial Postmasters?
As compared to other commercial postmasters
like those of Hotmail or Yahoo, CityU postmaster performs a great
deal more jobs to ensure the quality services essential for the
good system support in our University. To name just a few:
- sending more alerts
to both senders and recipients to warn them of any problems;
- providing handy internal support
to users;
- maintaining closer relationship
with users and hence having better understanding of their needs.
Just now is a brief overview of the
work of the CityU postmaster. Users can give a great helping hand
by avoiding the undesirable e-mail practices mentioned above, which
surely will free our postmaster from the unnecessary burdens to
give even better service to all of us.
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