Best Practices


Internet addressing is increasingly important to GroupWise administrators, so we encourage you to enable it and not to use Gateway aliases anymore. Before you do, however, you should be sure to carefully plan your Internet addressing implementation to avoid potential pitfalls. This section outlines some of the practices that administrators use successfully.

Naming Conventions

Following are a few tips to keep in mind as you plan your Internet addressing strategy:

  • Strive to make all user aka mailbox IDs unique throughout the GroupWise system. GroupWise administrator will require user IDs to be unique only per post office, so you will need a separate tool to ensure that you are not duplicating a user ID.

  • Use userid@Internet domain name as your preferred addressing format. The preferred addressing format is used to build the reply-to address, and if user IDs are unique system-wide, this format allows you to move users to any post office on your system without their Internet address changing. This setting will prevent reply-to addresses that are ambiguous in cases in which first- and last-name combinations are not unique.

  • If user IDs cannot be unique, avoid using Internet domain names to make an Internet address unique within the same GroupWise system. If Internet domain names are making the user portion of a local Internet address unique, the exclusive flag must be set on users who do not have unique user portions for their Internet addresses. This will mean that the user might be known only by the particular addressing format and Internet domain name. It also means extra work for the administrator. If user IDs cannot be unique, it will likely be easier to use the override option at the user level to define a free-form Internet address.

    Note

    With GroupWise 7, you can now use the same Internet email ID (the portion before the @ sign) for more than one user in your GroupWise system, provided that each user is in a different Internet domain. Rather than requiring that each Internet email ID be unique in your GroupWise system, each combination of Internet email ID and Internet domain must be unique. This provides more flexibility for handling the situation in which two people have the same name.

    However, we still recommend staying away from this option if possible and creating unique Internet email IDs if possible, because this will make your troubleshooting much easier.


  • User IDs, first names, and last names should not be the same as post office or domain names. (See the first scenario in the section "Parsing Scenarios," earlier in this chapter.) One easy solution for this problem is to include numbers or underscores in post office and domain names.

  • Users should have no more than three names embedded in their complete name. "Marcel de Korte" is okay, but "Sir Marcel de Korte" is not. Think of it this way: You can have a space in either the first-name or the last-name field, but never in both fields. Only the first name or the last name can have a space in the name.

  • Users cannot share the same first and last name or user ID unless each of the users has a unique Internet domain name and the exclusive flag is specified on the Internet addressing tab for each of the users. The exclusive flag will allow each user to be known only by the specified Internet domain name, thereby guaranteeing that the users' Internet addresses are unique.

  • When used, user Gateway aliases and nicknames should be unique throughout the system. We recommend eliminating Gateway aliases on all users within your GroupWise system. Gateway aliases on users defined under external domains are fine.

  • If you intend to send messages via S/MIME or PGP/MIME, do not use Gateway aliases. Rather, use free-form Internet addresses. When an S/MIME or PGP/MIME certificate has an email address that differs from the From field of an SMTP message, the message is considered invalid. Eliminating Gateway aliases resolves this potential problem.

The key here is to move toward unique Internet addresses. You should consider using the Email Address Lookup feature on the GroupWise Utilities menu in ConsoleOne to help you create unique addresses in your GroupWise system.

System Design

This section offers a few suggestions on effectively setting up GroupWise Internet addressing on your GroupWise system:

  • If direct MTA-to-MTA connectivity is enabled, the GroupWise domain that owns the default GWIA should be the default routing domain. This will simplify firewall administration (only one machine needs to be outside the firewall) and reduce traffic (you can find more about this feature in Chapter 34).

  • On large systems that span wide area networks, use default GWIA and default routing domain overrides to ensure that traffic bound to the Internet takes the most efficient route. (This assumes that your system has more than one connection to the Internet.)

  • If an external system (such as a UNIX mail host) shares your Internet domain name, enable the option Forward Undeliverable Inbound Messages to Host (found on the SMTP/Mime Undeliverable property page of the GWIA). See Chapter 10 for more details.

  • Ensure that all GWMTP-enabled MTAs can receive packets from their assigned port from the Internet and that they can send packets out to the Internet on high-numbered ports. See Chapter 34 for more details.

These system design suggestions are most relevant in large GroupWise systems (5,000 or more), of which there are many!



NOVELL GroupWise 7 Administrator Solutions Guide
Novell GroupWise 7 Administrator Solutions Guide
ISBN: 0672327880
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 320
Authors: Tay Kratzer

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