E-mail building up in Ex2000 queues - 1+ hour delay

[cakestick]

Hello,

Hoping somebody here can help me investigate an issue with my Exchange 2000 server. I am currently experiencing a delay of over an hour on our single mail server, with messages building up in both the pre-submission and messages waiting to be routed queues.

At this time, the delay has gone down to just under an hour, which is the same behavior I experienced last time this happened - the queues just seem to catch up and be fine from there. However, you all know that this isn't a satisfactory answer, and I'm absolutely stumped as to why this happens periodically. My only guess is that the insane amount of spam servers that try to connect to us is dragging the connection down, but by that much? Any help with the explanations in the 'Security' part of the FAQ regarding spam delay would also be helpful, because while our server is not relaying I am still receiving an insane amount of spam from the outside.

Any questions, I'll be glad to answer them. Thanks!

 

[MikeBatters]

Cake - Do you send NDRs etc out for the Spam you receive and what do you use for AntiSpam?

Some products can cause processing delays through sheer load issues.

The symptoms you are describing are typical of mass volume mail and would not surprise me.

What's you box you are running this on, how many users do you have etc?

Mike

*************************************

Remember - There is always another way..........I just haven't found out what it is yet!

 

[cakestick]

Mike,

My server doesn't currently send NDRs for spam, and I'm actually running SpamBayes at the client to handle spam processing. I know that this isn't the ideal solution, but I've inherited the server and am not sure how to quell the tide of junk on Exchange 2000. There are approx. 50 users on the server, which is a dual Athlon MP from 2-3 years ago.

The thing is, the default SMTP server is set up in such a way that if I remove anonymous access, we no longer receive any incoming e-mail. If I leave it enabled, we get incoming mail but it also means that spam servers can connect to us. I've already made sure they can't relay to the outside, but it seems that all they do is connect and spam my users.

Is there perhaps a setting or group of settings that I'm missing? Any explanation for why SMTP is so disastrous to configure on 2000? Thanks your your reply.

-Chris