[Freedombox-discuss] Email on the FreedomBox Discussion

[Aitor Pazos]

> A small UPS can power your DSL gateway, your DreamPlug, and a small
> ethernet switch for many, many hours.  However, the only way to find
> out whether your whole Internet connection will actually operate
> through a power outage is to have a power outage and try it.  We
> discovered a few years ago, when a big PG&E transformer blew up, that
> my line ran through a Pac Bell "channel bank" that had no backup
> power.  So even though my end of it was backed-up with a UPS, and so
> was my ISP's, our telco had screwed us.  (They fixed it, we think.)
> 
These are effective meassures but as I see it, we can not ask FB users to buy 
and install an UPS for their plug computer.

> PS: Put your server -- and your freezer and your smoke alarms --
> on a different circuit than your hair dryer.
> 
True, but my landlord won't be very pleased if I mess all the electricity 
installation up ;)

> This is false.  SMTP mail is queued by the sender and retried later.  If
> a LONG outage occurs (more than 24 hours), some will bounce, but that's
> good -- it notifies your correspondents that you aren't getting their
> messages.

The problem is that servers usually inform about delays as well and I see 
people getting confused by them. Once they receive this kind of messages, they 
don't know whether they should resend the mail or not. That's why I think it's 
important to avoid downtimes in the mail service.
 
> Existing mail protocols and software already have MX support.  Little
> or no change is needed to support backup mail servers that queue the
> messages and forward them to the primary server when it comes back up.
> 
...
> 
> Your backup mail provider can be a friend with a FreedomBox -- or
> anybody else who runs a mail server, including a giant faceless
> corporation in a data center.
>

Being able to easly use a friend's FB as backup seems attractive.

   cheers

-- 
Aitor Pazos Ibarzabal
Instant Messaging (Jabber, GTalk): aitor at aitorpazos.es
Web: http://aitorpazos.es
PGP Public Key: http://aitorpazos.es/publickey.asc