hi, may be this is a bit of topic, but i hope not. it's always a big question which is the better to choose a hosting provider to keep and manage you mail or setup your own mail server, hosting, virus and spam filter etc.. now as more and more people and company move to gmail or google apps mail service it seems google can't handle the load and it's getting more and more slower. what's more not just the imap interface but nowadays the web interface used to be hang or even stop working. it's getting more and more annoying that the speed is worst than in a 10 years ago. i thing about how can this be solved without totally give up gmail as a mail service provider (and may be they can solve it in a few months/years:-). would it be possible to create a dovecot server as an imap proxy for gmail and google apps? imho many people/company would be love to use such a setup where he can use gmail in vacation or any other time, but when the email is real critical apps (not acceptable to wait 1 minutes for an email to load or to open a folder/label) than he can use a proxy server eg. dovecot which act as a imap proxy to gmail and can be hosted on closer, faster server and this speed problem never happend. what's more it can be used as a mail backup server too. anybody has any such setup, idea? would it be possible with dovecot. any other suggestion? yours. -- Levente "Si vis pacem para bellum!"
To have a speed increase, dovecot needs direct access to the emails. So you'll need them stored locally. You can't use it as a proxy, just to speed up things, because dovecot would just need to wait for gmail too, to load an email (except if dovecot would cache the emails, but then again, it's just a cache, and you're talking about 'critical applications'). I'm not sure, but I don't think there's even a way to run dovecot as a proxy. Why don't you forward mail from your gmail account to your own server? That's so much easier and more common. You get the benefit of good filtering, and you have your own server to access your mail. If your own server goes down, you still have gmail as backup. Alexander Farkas Levente wrote:> hi, > may be this is a bit of topic, but i hope not. it's always a big > question which is the better to choose a hosting provider to keep and > manage you mail or setup your own mail server, hosting, virus and spam > filter etc.. now as more and more people and company move to gmail or > google apps mail service it seems google can't handle the load and it's > getting more and more slower. what's more not just the imap interface > but nowadays the web interface used to be hang or even stop working. > it's getting more and more annoying that the speed is worst than in a 10 > years ago. i thing about how can this be solved without totally give up > gmail as a mail service provider (and may be they can solve it in a few > months/years:-). > would it be possible to create a dovecot server as an imap proxy for > gmail and google apps? > imho many people/company would be love to use such a setup where he can > use gmail in vacation or any other time, but when the email is real > critical apps (not acceptable to wait 1 minutes for an email to load or > to open a folder/label) than he can use a proxy server eg. dovecot which > act as a imap proxy to gmail and can be hosted on closer, faster server > and this speed problem never happend. what's more it can be used as a > mail backup server too. > anybody has any such setup, idea? would it be possible with dovecot. > any other suggestion? > yours. >
On Jun 17, 2008, at 6:03 PM, Farkas Levente wrote:> would it be possible to create a dovecot server as an imap proxy for > gmail and google apps? > imho many people/company would be love to use such a setup where he > can use gmail in vacation or any other time, but when the email is > real critical apps (not acceptable to wait 1 minutes for an email to > load or to open a folder/label) than he can use a proxy server eg. > dovecot which act as a imap proxy to gmail and can be hosted on > closer, faster server and this speed problem never happend. what's > more it can be used as a mail backup server too.I've thought about a caching IMAP mail storage backend for Dovecot and even started implementing it once, but it didn't get very far. If someone wants to try to continue it, I can send what I've written so far. Although it's mostly a copy of cydir backend with a tiny bit of it replaced with IMAP code. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PGP.sig Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 194 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20080617/e4a61174/attachment-0002.bin>
On Tue, 17 Jun 2008, Farkas Levente wrote:> hi, > may be this is a bit of topic, but i hope not. it's always a big question > which is the better to choose a hosting provider to keep and manage you mail > or setup your own mail server, hosting, virus and spam filter etc.. now as > more and more people and company move to gmail or google apps mail service it > seems google can't handle the load and it's getting more and more slower. > what's more not just the imap interface but nowadays the web interface used > to be hang or even stop working. it's getting more and more annoying that the > speed is worst than in a 10 years ago. i thing about how can this be solved > without totally give up gmail as a mail service provider (and may be they can > solve it in a few months/years:-). > would it be possible to create a dovecot server as an imap proxy for gmail > and google apps?What I have is: * rose, my primary server (but far away) * supercore, another server at my parents' house rose is the primary MX. I run offlineimap on supercore to sync a local Maildir on supercore with rose's IMAP - that way, my parents can use a server with <1ms ping, and as they use Dovecot to modify the local Maildir on supercore, a minute later offlineimap will wake up and create IMAP operations to synchronize rose with the state on supercore. FWIW. -- Asheesh. -- Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days.