Question: SSL via POP3 a performance killer?

[Odhiambo Washington]

* John Fox <readbsd at mind.net> [20040429 00:09]: wrote:
> I'm planning my company's next mail server, and would like to get
> away from using plain-text authentication for POP3 service.  It's
> been suggested to me that my best bet would actually be to run POP3
> over SSL, and thus simply encrypt the clear-text authentication,
> and that would be good enough for me.
> 
> However, I've also been told that SSL can be very demanding of even
> a very powerful computer.
> 
> This new machine will likely run an AMD XP 2600 (or if I'm lucky,
> maybe even a 3X99) processor and 1G of RAM, and the OS will (obviously)
> be FreeBSD, probably 4.10.  It will service approx- imately 13,000
> POP3 accounts, and handle approximately 100,000 POP3 requests per
> day.
> 
> Does this seem a workable setup, or does it appear that the 
> system will indeed be overwhelmed by all the SSL?

This is an overkill.

And I recommend tpop3d as the POP3 daemon. 1.5.3 Supports SSL.
I run it here for over 14k users on a machine with specs lower than
yours, which is also my main SMTP server, does web hosting, IMAP,
etc.


-Wash

http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

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