SMTP proxy

[evil.oz]

hello
i had for years wingate 6 running with 2 different SMTP proxies.

Recently i migrated to wingate8, and (with some minor troubles) everything works fine.

The two SMTP proxy service were correctly imported and converted into new version. They work fine.

The problem is that now i dont have a way to EDIT the settings of the proxy. In the registry i see the proxy details, like the server name...

How can i edit these 2 services without accessing registry? and.. more important, HOW can i recreate them?
Can i create a standart TCP map for this? (each server on different local port ofc)?

if possible i would prefer to NOT rely on wingate SMTP server.

thanks

[adrien]

Hi

we deprecated the SMTP proxy with WinGate 7.0 back in 2011.

There were several reasons for this. Basically:

* the SMTP proxy had been added in WinGate 4 to add functionality to what was previously used (TCP mapping) to enable specifying which domains were local, in order to protect a back end server from relaying. We added the SMTP server proper in WinGate 5. From this point there was a fair amount of confusion with many customers which created a fair amount of support load. Other issues with this related to handling the fact that both the SMTP proxy and SMTP server wanted to run on port 25, so there were settings to hand sessions over from one service to the other depending on how the connection was used.

* the SMTP proxy didn't really evolve after WinGate 4, however the SMTP server did. Key in this was the ability to scan the traffic.

* since the SMTP proxy was basically just a beefed up TCP mapping proxy, issues around connection failure handling are masked from the clients. For instance an SMTP client trying to deliver via a SMTP proxy won't see a connection failure if the ISP SMTP server is down, since the connection to the proxy succeeds. All they get is a disconnect, which is not SMTP compliant.

I agree it's not a great solution to retain the proxy but prevent its editing. You can't add one either. The dilemma is if you delete it, you break things.

Is there any particular reason you don't want to use the SMTP server? Were you using the SMTP proxy for both inbound and outbound? You may be able to just use a TCP mapping proxy instead.

Adrien

[evil.oz]

thanks for reply

i used to have a SMTP server when i was on wingate 5/6. It was not stable enough, and often the client reported a sucessful delivery while the message was stuck on wingate outgoing queue.

For this reason i prefer a SMTP proxy (only outgoing, port 8025), so i can control the delivery SMTP destination once for all workstations while still allowing the client to be sure the mail has been delivered.

Wingate is a nice piece of software but it does crash and sometimes behave in a unexpected manner, so i install/activate only the stuff i really need.
I think that simple stuff usually delivers best reliability. Using a SMTP server seems to me like a really complicated solution for a simple need.


Will try to setup a port8025 > port25 tcp mapping and see.

regards

[adrien]

Hi

for outbound mail, there is not really any difference between a TCP mapping and the SMTP proxy. SMTP proxy did most of its extra work on incoming mail - checking against the list of local domains to prevent relaying.

But the SMTP server is a lot better now than it was in WinGate 5. We use it for our own mail, and also as a gateway.

In terms of store and forward, any other SMTP server (like at your ISP) will be the same unless you're delivering to the final server that hosts the mailboxes, the mail will be stored and forwarded, and anything can happen to prevent onward delivery even though the forwarder accepted the mail. That's where bounce messages come in.

Regards

Adrien