Chapter 7: Planning Your E-Mail Installation

Chapter 7: Planning Your E-Mail Installation

Overview

In previous chapters, I covered the way in which mail systems work and the main standards that dominate the market. This theory provides a good background and is necessary when you start to plan your e-mail installation. In this chapter, I explain planning how to integrate your e-mail systems.

Is Your Environment Ready?

Almost every network hardware and network operating system software combination can support some type of e-mail, but it doesn?t always work the other way around. Many e-mail software products require only basic services from the network system software on which they run and need only a compliant OSI, TCP/IP, or NetBIOS network.

Some products will work only on one type of network protocol or network operating system. Luckily, for the sake of interoperability, only a minority of products is restricted in this way. Products such as Lotus Notes and GroupWise started life on one type of network operating system but have since been ported to other platforms. Microsoft Exchange Server runs on Windows NT, but NT itself is available on several hardware platforms and supports links to a range of other network systems.

Last, many enterprise e-mail products use open standards such as X.400 or the TCP/IP suite of protocols as a foundation for transport over a network. For example, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP all need a network running TCP/IP?typically a UNIX- or Windows-based network?and X.400 products expect an OSI-compliant network.

The simplest way for mail software to operate is...

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Chapter 7: Planning Your E-Mail Installation

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