printer-friendly

Home > Email > Server(s) Details

Email is one of the most heavily used information technology services on the Rensselaer campus. All members of the Rensselaer community have an email address of the form <rcsid>@rpi.edu. In addition, some departments provide other email addresses to faculty, staff and students.

DotCIO, the Division of the CIO, runs not one but many e-mail servers and services:

1. SMTP cluster (mail.rpi.edu)
   SMTP is the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol used to send email messages from clients to central mail servers such as mail.rpi.edu, as well as from e-mail server to e-mail server. Mail.rpi.edu's SMTP service is implemented as a Linux cluster in addition to delivering mail virus scans incoming and outgoing messages.
2. Exchange
   DotCIO's Exchange service is a cluster of 5 Windows 2003 servers running Microsoft Exchange 2003. This service provides email and collaborative calendaring, primarily, for Administrative staff. The service also provides storage and transport for all voicemail, in conjunction with a Cisco Unity front-end, for the entire Rensselaer community.
3. WebMail (webmail.rpi.edu)
   Rensselaer's Webmail service is a single UNIX server running a highly customized version of EmuMail. Webmail is an IMAP client.
4. IMAP (mail.rpi.edu)
   IMAP is a mail storage system which can be accessed by any IMAP client. Users can create and share folders, and access email from anywhere. Multiple clients can be configured to access IMAP. All clients will see the same email.
5. POP3 server (mail.rpi.edu)
   Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is an older email service. POP3 clients are simple: they look for new email in the server INBOX, download copies and, optionally, delete old email from the server. The POP3 INBOX is the same as the IMAP inbox..
6. ListProc (lists.rpi.edu)
   Rensselaer's mailing list manager service is a single UNIX server running ListProc. List subscribers and owners with RCS userids can use a web interface to manage their lists.
7. RESPITE (respite.rpi.edu)
   RESPITE is the Rensselaer Enterprise SPam Interdiction TEchnology server. It is a server-based spam-trap, based on Roaring Penguin's CanIT Trap Pro software, which uses heuristics to identify messages that might be Unsolicited Commercial Email (spam). RESPITE is an opt-in service, which can be activated at http://respite.rpi.edu/.

On a typical day over 1,000,000 emails are sent to the main RPI mail servers at mail.rpi.edu. The overwhelming majority of these are spam messages which are rejected or trapped by Respite. There are over 600,000 attempts to read email via the POP3 or IMAP protocols. The Exchange server handles at least another 100,000 internal email messages.

If you are running programs which send email, it is your duty to ensure the program and resulting email do not interfere with the operation of the mail services of Rensselaer or any other email service provider.

The published policies and procedures apply under normal operating conditions. When necessary for the continued operation of email services, these policies may be suspended or changed without notice. Except where noted, users are responsible for checking their email, keeping copies of their email, and providing for backup of their email.

Rensselaer maintains backup copies of the e-mail spool(s) for disaster recovery purposes only. These backups are done nightly, not continuously. Users should not assume they can recover inadvertently deleted or misplaced messages from these disaster recovery copies.

Last modified: November 26, 2007