📄️ Queues
Queues are essentially a holding area for outbound messages in an SMTP server. When a message arrives, it is placed in the queue until it can be delivered to its final destination. Stalwart SMTP supports an unlimited number of virtual queues, which means that a system administrator can create and configure multiple queues with different settings and behaviors. This allows for a high degree of flexibility and customization in managing incoming messages. For example, different queues can be created for different types of messages, such as messages from high-priority senders or messages with specific content, and these queues can be processed differently, such as by assigning more resources or prioritizing delivery.
📄️ Routing
Stalwart SMTP allows to define how messages should be delivered to their final destination through routing rules. Rules are configured under the queue.outbound.next-hop parameter, which can either point to a remote host defined in the configuration file or contain the value false which indicates that the message delivery should be done through DNS resolution. Routing rules are useful for tasks such as forwarding messages for local domains to a message store over LMTP.
📄️ Transport
The transport layer of the SMTP client is responsible for establishing connections to remote SMTP servers and delivering messages to them. The transport layer is configured under the queue.outbound key in the outbound queue configuration file.
📄️ TLS security
Stalwart SMTP supports various security measures for secure email transmission, including DANE (DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities), MTA-STS (Mail Transfer Agent Strict Transport Security) and TLS Reporting. DANE allows for secure authentication of mail servers using cryptographic certificates stored in the domain name system. MTA-STS enforces the use of encrypted connections between mail servers and requires that the recipient's mail server supports encryption. TLS Reporting helps organizations monitor the encryption status of their email delivery, providing information on whether messages are encrypted or not and if encryption is being used, what type of encryption is in use. These security measures aim to increase the privacy and security of email communications and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.
📄️ Throttling
Throttling is a mechanism that restricts the rate at which outbound messages are sent to a remote SMTP server. It is used to prevent the remote SMTP server from being overwhelmed by too many outgoing messages, which can lead to performance degradation, connectivity issues, or even being marked as a spammer by ISPs. Concurrency limiting and rate limiting are two techniques used in Stalwart SMTP to control the amount of outbound traffic.
📄️ Quotas
Quotas allows to set limits on the message queue to control its size and total number of messages. Stalwart SMTP supports enforcing dynamic quotas on the message queue, which means that it can limit the total size and number of messages waiting to be delivered based on multiple variables. If a queue quota is exceeded, messages will be temporarily rejected with a 4xx SMTP code. This is useful in preventing the server from becoming overwhelmed by too many messages and ensuring that important messages are delivered promptly.
📄️ DNS
The DNS resolver is responsible for resolving human-readable domain names into IP addresses and other type of machine-readable records. This is done by sending DNS queries to a DNS server, which then responds with the associated record of the domain name in question.