From 2c5bd8a7e85185bb01b09b2dabed8b1a19c3ca79 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 00:27:48 +0000
Subject: Added FAQ item.

svn path=/trunk/; revision=2823
---
 fetchmail-FAQ.html | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 23 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

(limited to 'fetchmail-FAQ.html')

diff --git a/fetchmail-FAQ.html b/fetchmail-FAQ.html
index c856386a..6ac8fd77 100644
--- a/fetchmail-FAQ.html
+++ b/fetchmail-FAQ.html
@@ -10,7 +10,7 @@
 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
 <td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
 <td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/13 16:44:57 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/14 00:27:48 $
 </table>
 <HR>
 <H1>Frequently Asked Questions About Fetchmail</H1>
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ IP address?</a><br>
 <a href="#G12">G12. Is any special configuration needed to <em>send</em> mail?</a><br>
 <a href="#G13">G13. Is fetchmail Y2K-compliant?</a><br>
 <a href="#G14">G14. Is there a way in fetchmail to support disconnected IMAP mode?</a><br>
+<a href="#G15">G15. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a><br>
 
 <h1>Build-time problems:</h1>
 
@@ -616,6 +617,26 @@ No. Fetchmail is a mail transport agent, best understood as a protocol
 gateway between POP3/IMAP servers and SMTP.  Disconnected operation
 requires an elaborate interactive client.  It's a very different problem.<p>
 
+<hr>
+<h2><a name="G15">G15. How will fetchmail perform under heavy loads?</a></h2>
+
+Fetchmail streams message bodies line-by-line; the most core it
+ever requires per message is enough memory to hold the RFC822 header, and
+that storage is freed when body processing begins. It is, accordingly,
+quite economical in its use of memory.<p>
+
+After startup time, a fetchmail running in daemon mode stats its
+configuration file once per poll cycle to see whether it has changed
+and should be rescanned.  Other than that, a fetchmail in normal
+operation doesn't touch the disk at all; that job is left up to the
+MTA or MDA the fetchmail talks to.<p>
+
+Fetchmail's performance is usually bottlenecked by latency on the POP
+server or (less often) on the TCP/IP link to the server.  This is not
+a problem readily solved by tuning fetchmail, or even by buying more
+TCP/IP capacity (which tends to improve bandwidth but not necessarily
+latency).<p>
+
 <hr>
 <h2><a name="B1">B1. Lex bombs out while building the fetchmail lexer.</a></h2>
 
@@ -2747,7 +2768,7 @@ terminate it.<p>
 <table width="100%" cellpadding=0><tr>
 <td width="30%">Back to <a href="index.html">Fetchmail Home Page</a>
 <td width="30%" align=center>To <a href="/~esr/sitemap.html">Site Map</a>
-<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/13 16:44:57 $
+<td width="30%" align=right>$Date: 2000/03/14 00:27:48 $
 </table>
 
 <P><ADDRESS>Eric S. Raymond <A HREF="mailto:esr@thyrsus.com">&lt;esr@snark.thyrsus.com&gt;</A></ADDRESS>
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