limiting sendmail SMTP connections

[Richard Johnsson]

Is there a (reasonable) way to limit the number of simultaneous SMTP
connections that sendmail will accept? When our Internet connection comes up
after being down for a couple days (as it did yesterday), our load average
goes through the ceiling as all of our friends in Internet-land try to
unload their waiting mail. In yesterday's episode, the load went from 1 to
12 in less than five minutes. The sendmail queue went over 400 messages and
the system didn't really return to normal for at least 12 hours.

I heard a rumor of such a feature, but haven't been able to find any
evidence of it in the code.

	Richard Johnsson     RHEA::JOHNSSON     johnsson at DECWRL.ARPA
	{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4,allegra}!decwrl!johnsson
	DEC Western Software Lab, Los Altos, CA  (415) 949-1494