OSEC

Neohapsis is currently accepting applications for employment. For more information, please visit our website www.neohapsis.com or email hr@neohapsis.com
 
Subject: Re: 3x as fast?
From: Wietse Venema (wietseporcupine.org)
Date: Thu Aug 24 2000 - 12:14:35 CDT

Alan P. Laudicina:
> Hey there,
>
> The postfix website claims that it is 3x as fast as it's nearest
> competitor. But isn't the nearest competitor qmail? Is it really
> 3x as fast as qmail or are we referring to sendmail here (which
> would be a lot easier to beleive)

Postfix uses one queue file per message, qmail uses 3, and disks
are slow compared to CPUs or local networks. Hence the difference.

However, the difference in delivery speed due to disk I/O delays
is unlikely to show up with remote deliveries. You would need to
have very fast network connections, and you'd have a conflict with
light speed limit.

It seems to make more difference that qmail always sends one message
per recipient while Postfix sends multiple recipients per message
if it can. Which is faster depends on many factors including
message size and on the recipient distribution.

For the BUGTRAQ mailing list, Postfix reduced delivery time
significantly. Apparently, sending multiple recipients per message
helps them a lot.

        Wietse