Re: IBM i SMTP email service

""reliability and debugging issues" is ambiguous."

Not at all. It was unreliable and we had trouble debugging the causes. Simple as that.

Anyway - this is hardly on topic. We had problems** - we switched - we're happy - end of story.

** Part of the problem was keeping up with the ongoing configuration changes needed to get mail through to clients of gmail and other mail hosting services. I had better uses for my time than learning how to jump through the latest hoop and opted for a solution where somebody else worried about it!


Jon Paris

www.partner400.com
www.SystemiDeveloper.com

On Jan 23, 2018, at 6:04 PM, Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 3:06 PM, Jon Paris <jon.paris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Nathan,

We use PHPMailer which I believe uses Zend's built-in mail binary - but I
wouldn't swear to that.

PHPMailer is an application, which is different from an SMTP client or SMTP
server. You obviously know that because of your reference to a possible
Zend binary. It would be interesting to hear from Zend. Until then, I'll
maintain the possibility that the IBM i implementation of Zend may be using
the IBM i SMTP client.

Actually, if I understand correctly, anyone who is using the Zend server to
send email, can review the configuration directives in their PHP.INI and
SENDMAIL.INI files to see which SMTP server is employed under the covers,
and how SMTP authentication is configured. Some of the examples that are
available on the Internet have PHP configured to use the XAMPP SMTP client.

The following quote from the PHP documentation for the mail() function is
worth mentioning. Mike indicated a requirement to send to thousands of
recipients:

"It is worth noting that the mail() function is not suitable for larger
volumes of email in a loop. This function opens and closes an SMTP socket
for each email, which is not very efficient."


I should mention that I missed a step. We had moved away from the IBM i

SMTP server a long time back due to reliability and debugging issues.
Immediately prior to switching to G-suite we were using iDevCloud's mail
server (whatever that is).

"reliability and debugging issues" is ambiguous.

We then switched away from that because getting it set up so that we
weren't running foul of gmail and other spam barriers was just proving too
time consuming. Switching to G-suite made all those problems go away for a
very small monthly fee!

I do understand that configuring email is tricky, and when not complete, it
can lead to rejections from servers that host recipients. However, I think
that most of the criticism against the IBM i SMTP i client and server is
undeserved. Most developers don't know how to configure everything that
needs to be configured, whereas the people at say Gmail know how to do it
for their account holders.

When email is configured properly on an IBM i server, and in the DNS
entries that reference your domain, the IBM i SMTP client and server are
VERY reliable. It performs very well.

IBM i MSF however is a different story. That interface is so under
documented, incomprehensible, and esoteric, that I'd avoid it. Avoid using
SNDDST and some of the other APIs that forward to MSF.
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