Please, advise on mail transport for Asus Merlin

[netware5]

I will appreciate any advices about secure, reliable and easy to administer mail transport system to be installed on RT-N66U with Asus Merlin FW. It should include at least IMAP and SMTP server. The mail transport system will be used to serve a few (less than 10) mailboxes with less than 50 e-mail messages per day. Using SSL and security certificates is essential.

 

[RMerlin]

I will appreciate any advices about secure, reliable and easy to administer mail transport system to be installed on RT-N66U with Asus Merlin FW. It should include at least IMAP and SMTP server. The mail transport system will be used to serve a few (less than 10) mailboxes with less than 50 e-mail messages per day. Using SSL and security certificates is essential.

With less than 200 MB of free RAM and disk IO barely hitting 15 MB/s, I wouldn't try that. IMAP would be a pig on such a platform, even using Dovecot (which makes extensive use of indexes to reduce disk I/O).

Mail in general is very I/O intensive.

 

[netware5]

With less than 200 MB of free RAM and disk IO barely hitting 15 MB/s, I wouldn't try that. IMAP would be a pig on such a platform, even using Dovecot (which makes extensive use of indexes to reduce disk I/O).

Mail in general is very I/O intensive.

Thank you RMerlin for your prompt response. In fact the required parameters (max 10 mailboxes and max 50 messages per day) are a little bit conservative. The reality will be 3-4 mailboxes and 10-15 messages per day average. I am not an expert in maintaining mail servers and had no idea that IMAP needs so much disk I/O. Do you think that even in such "light case" like above the disk I/O will be a problem?

BTW my idea was to use an internal microSD card...

 

[bill1228]

These routers are built for routing/networking. They do not have the resources, cpu and memory, to support things like being a mail server. Better to provision some old piece of PC hardware to act as a mail server. Just my $.02.
--bill

 

[RMerlin]

Thank you RMerlin for your prompt response. In fact the required parameters (max 10 mailboxes and max 50 messages per day) are a little bit conservative. The reality will be 3-4 mailboxes and 10-15 messages per day average. I am not an expert in maintaining mail servers and had no idea that IMAP needs so much disk I/O. Do you think that even in such "light case" like above the disk I/O will be a problem?

BTW my idea was to use an internal microSD card...

You will need either fast disks, or enough RAM to have a good cache. The problem in this case is you will have neither of these, so you will be caught with both bottleneck. If for example you have a 200 MB mailbox on the router and you delete a message in the middle, re-indexing everything will be quite resource-intensive.

Running IMAP on my router was something I was myself considering at some point. I ended up getting a Google Apps account instead - all the benefits for a very affordable price (I only have one single mailbox really, the rest are just aliases).

 

[sfx2000]

I will appreciate any advices about secure, reliable and easy to administer mail transport system to be installed on RT-N66U with Asus Merlin FW. It should include at least IMAP and SMTP server. The mail transport system will be used to serve a few (less than 10) mailboxes with less than 50 e-mail messages per day. Using SSL and security certificates is essential.

It's a ROUTER - let it do what it does best - push packets around.

I would suggest either looking into building a box, or getting an off the shelf NAS box where you have more storage and memory.