iis smtp nntp: Does anybody know how to set the retries, expiration, and
delay so that a message is retried once and if it fails it
deletes and generates an ndr within an hour? (I realize

I currently have them set like this(minutes):
First Retry Interval: 5
Second Retry Interval: 6
Third Retry Interval: 7
Subsequent retry interval: 240
Delay Notification: 40
Expiration: 45

Local:
Delay notification: 40
Expiration Timeout:45

The sever is intended to be a gateway smtp server for a
Linux Sendmail server. The problem is that the queue
grows out of control since it relays 12000 messages per
hour of which 7000 messages can't be delivered since the
email address no longer exists on the Linux server and
sendmail is configured to drop the connection on bad
recipients (most, but not all, is spam). It seems that
the maximum outgoing messages that IIS SMTP can process is
about 24000 per hour on this machine. Based on this
number, I would think the machine can handle it.

I figure that 12000 messages will come in in the first
hour, 7000 will go to the queue since they can't be
delivered, some will actually turn into NDR's since the
Queue processing is ramping up. The next hour, the 7000
turn into non deliverable NDR's 7000 more are added to the
queue. The next hour, 7000 NDR's goto badmail , 7000
NDR's get created, and 7000 messages get added to the
queue. So, my intent is to figure out how to set IIS SMTP
to only process the queue messages once - turning them
into NDRs and attempting a send immediately - if they
don't send they get added to the queue - but like the
message, only get processed once. I figured that since
the queue is so large it will get to a point where it
takes so long to get to the message a second time all the
thresholds have been exceeded and it will either issue an
NDR or move the NDR into badmail (hence the 45 minutes).

The bottom line is that these setting don't seem to work
like I figure - when I see messages that haven't
been "touched" by the queue process for 4 hours I del *.*
(not everything deletes due to open files), net stop
smtpsvc, delete any NDR's, then reboot the machine and
everything runs great for about 4 hours. Any knowledge of
how these settings affect large queues would be
appreciated.

Joe


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