What is SMTP DirectPath?

Issue

What is SMTP DirectPath?

Solution

DirectPath is a specific version of the FastPath message transfer agent (MTA) that does all of its processing in memory. It also has the added feature that it does not acknowledge receipt of a message until the message has been fully processed and delivered on the backend. This guarantees that the message will never be lost should a catastrophic failure occur on the Mirapoint appliance running the DirectPath MTA. The DirectPath MTA waits until the final destination for the email acknowledges receipt of the email before issuing a receipt acknowledgment to the mail server attempting to send the email through the Mirapoint appliance.

These two features create a "stateless" MTA, that can guarantee delivery of email and provide the fastest possible processing available in the Mirapoint appliance. In order to provide this fast processing and this guarantee of delivery, this MTA is not available with LDAP routing, and is best suited for environments where routing is not required (e.g., single mail server environments) or where existing mail routing solutions exist.

In addition, DirectPath does not support the following features:

• Antispam
• Antivirus
• auto provisioning
• autoreply
• DL expansion
• domain filtering
• domain signature
• forwarding
• LDAP mailgroups
• LDAP service interruptions
• masquerade
• more than 20 recipients
• RBL header
• quarantine

With DirectPath filtering at end-of-receipt, filtered addresses are taken before alias expansion, so they are DL names instead of DL recipient lists. Customers should enable DirectPath only when recommended by Mirapoint Technical Staff. For more information on DirectPath and Fastpath, see the Mirapoint Administration Protocol Reference for your version of MOS and About SMTP Fastpath.