What Mail Server Do The Big Universities Use?

By Daniel Miessler on May 9th, 2006: Tagged as Geek | Linux | Programming

Ever wonder what mail servers people run? I found myself wondering what the top universities used, so I wrote a lame little script to go and query the top 50 schools from this list, find out their mail servers, and then netcat to them to see what they respond with.

The results were interesting. I was specifically wondering how the war between Sendmail and Postfix was going. As expected, Sendmail is still winning, but Postfix seems to be holding its own. 220 perseus.services.brown.edu ESMTP Sendmail X.X.X; Tue, 9 May 2006 17:06:13 -0400 (EDT) 220 mailhub4.dartmouth.edu ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.5/DND2.0/8.13.5; Tue, 9 May 2006 17:06:16 -0400 220 ns3.br.harvard.edu ESMTP Postfix 220 nisc.net.isc.upenn.edu ESMTP Postfix 220 emfw1.Princeton.EDU ESMTP (0ebdea0d60768e14e7c57b1a3713dd99) 220 mr5.its.yale.edu ESMTP server ready at Tue, 9 May 2006 17:06:18 -0400 220 MIT.EDU ESMTP Sendmail (no collect or third party calls) at Tue, 9 May 2006 17:06:19 -0400 (EDT) 220 water-ox.its.caltech.edu ESMTP Postfix 220 mx4.stanford.edu ESMTP Postfix 220-pohl.acpub.duke.edu ESMTP Duke University Sendmail 8.12.10/Duke-5.0.0; 220 MailRouter-2.wustl.edu ESMTP Mirapoint 3.5.8-GR; Tue, 9 May 2006 16:06:26 -0500 (CDT) 220 relay.it.northwestern.edu ESMTP Postfix 220 ipex2.johnshopkins.edu ESMTP (--snipped--) So out of 36 responses I got 7 with Postfix in the banner. If we take that highly unscientific sample and call it legit, we’re looking at roughly 20% of top-50 universities using Postfix. Not bad.

Aside from the MTA war, though, it was just interesting to see what these guys were putting in their banners. Check out the Princeton one, for example — they have some sort of secret message encoded with MD5 in theirs. And MIT points out that they don’t want any collect or third party calls. Nice.

Anyway, here are the results and the tool I used. Be sure to check out the raw output as well; there are quite a few interesting tidbits in there.:

The Results The Raw Results The Script I Used The List of Universities I Used

  • Tim

    I noticed that very few on that list were schools in Georgia, but here’s my $0.02 as an insider:

    It’s all a matter of support. USG’s OIIT (where a lot of Georgia Institutions go for tech help when they need it) officially supports sendmail, so a lot of institutions in Georgia use sendmail.

    That’s also the reason we have no linux servers on campus… and one reason (but not the only one) that I don’t like my windows servers on campus. OIIT doesn’t have official support for Windows or linux servers (though I’ve heard they would rather support linux machines).

  • Tim

    I noticed that very few on that list were schools in Georgia, but here’s my $0.02 as an insider:

    It’s all a matter of support. USG’s OIIT (where a lot of Georgia Institutions go for tech help when they need it) officially supports sendmail, so a lot of institutions in Georgia use sendmail.

    That’s also the reason we have no linux servers on campus… and one reason (but not the only one) that I don’t like my windows servers on campus. OIIT doesn’t have official support for Windows or linux servers (though I’ve heard they would rather support linux machines).

  • Anon

    Tim, your post makes no sense, what the heck are you talking about?

  • Anon

    Tim, your post makes no sense, what the heck are you talking about?

  • anonymous

    He’s explaining why sendmail would be prevelent, then rambled a little about windows and linux support on campus. I thought that was painfully obvious.

  • anonymous

    He’s explaining why sendmail would be prevelent, then rambled a little about windows and linux support on campus. I thought that was painfully obvious.

  • http://www.webtext.com/ Sushil Verma

    It’s all a matter of support. USG’s OIIT (where a lot of Georgia Institutions go for tech help when they need it) officially supports sendmail, so a lot of institutions in Georgia use sendmail.

  • http://www.webtext.com Sushil Verma

    It’s all a matter of support. USG’s OIIT (where a lot of Georgia Institutions go for tech help when they need it) officially supports sendmail, so a lot of institutions in Georgia use sendmail.

  • Jargon

    You didnt list FirstClass, which, for assorted reasons, has a major footprint among universities/academic institutes..

  • Jargon

    You didnt list FirstClass, which, for assorted reasons, has a major footprint among universities/academic institutes..

  • http://www.jeremygaddis.com/ Jeremy

    At the edge, we run postfix. It just works(tm).

  • http://www.jeremygaddis.com/ Jeremy

    At the edge, we run postfix. It just works(tm).

  • Dan Stoner

    Hey, could you post the results that include all 50 universities? We are actually wondering what else besides postfix and sendmail are running (e.g. how much MS Exchange is out there). Thanks!

  • Dan Stoner

    Hey, could you post the results that include all 50 universities? We are actually wondering what else besides postfix and sendmail are running (e.g. how much MS Exchange is out there). Thanks!

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  • Adam

    Marquette University (not on the list) is an Exchange shop having replaced an old Netscape Mail (at least that’s what the Webmail client said) server.

    -A

  • Adam

    Marquette University (not on the list) is an Exchange shop having replaced an old Netscape Mail (at least that’s what the Webmail client said) server.

    -A

  • http://www.bannertherapy.com/ Massage-Therapy-Products

    Exchange? Bleh! I just don’t know what I’d do if our mail server didn’t drop 1/8th of the emails people send to us. We might actually hear from people who are trying to contact us. No need for that! Yay for Microshaft (another job well botched — that’s right, Dan G., I’m looking at you).

  • http://www.bannertherapy.com/ Massage-Therapy-Products

    Exchange? Bleh! I just don’t know what I’d do if our mail server didn’t drop 1/8th of the emails people send to us. We might actually hear from people who are trying to contact us. No need for that! Yay for Microshaft (another job well botched — that’s right, Dan G., I’m looking at you).

  • Dan Stoner

    I have been working via email with Daniel Miessler. Daniel was kind enough to re-run his scripts with a few modifications: 1. All MX records were checked (in case the primary is not responding). 2. The top-100 universities were checked.

    Only four (4) of the top-100 Universities are using MS Exchange servers as front-line MX servers.

    Results posted to our local university mailing list: http://lists.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0605&L=ccc&T=0&F=&S=&P=39058

  • Dan Stoner

    I have been working via email with Daniel Miessler. Daniel was kind enough to re-run his scripts with a few modifications: 1. All MX records were checked (in case the primary is not responding). 2. The top-100 universities were checked.

    Only four (4) of the top-100 Universities are using MS Exchange servers as front-line MX servers.

    Results posted to our local university mailing list: http://lists.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0605&L=ccc&T=0&F=&S=&P=39058

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