After the upgrade (on Chertan) on Dec 24th, I have found that I can no longer go online with more than one account to the server at a time.

We are using Apple Mail and use an IMAP connection. I'm often away with my laptop and my spouse uses a desktop at home. We have an account used to receive e-mail from several e-mail addresses, and then I have my separate account setup on our domain. 

I am finding that in order to go online on one account, I have to take the other offline first.  As well, it looks like I cannot be online for my account on my laptop when the desktop is online in that account. 

We have been using IMAP so that both computers can have the same copy of folder and incoming/outgoing messages.   

Since the upgrade, we no longer seem to be able to do that conveniently. 

As well, when I go to delete messages, I am also getting an error indicating that Mail cannot move messages to the "Deleted Messages" folder (The folder does exist under my account). 

Is anyone else having similar or other IMAP problems? 

Thanks.

-Dave

I have a handle on what is happening, but I can't do anything to fix the problem. 

When Lunarpages migrated to courier, they inherited a default setting which sets the maximum number of IMAP connections per unique IP addresses to 4. 

However, many IMAP clients use more than one connection.  For example, Thunderbird 2 can use 5, but at least there is a way to tame the client and tell it to use no more than one at a time per account.

If you need to check more than one account, you will have more than one connection.  And, if you are using a client like Apple Mail, it has up to 5 or so connections when first checking e-mail and going online, so getting online with Apple Mail is very hit and miss.  Even when you do get in, if you have many subfolders, you won't get online for very long. 

As well, if you have other people sharing a single internet connection through a router (probably most of us), then the problem is exacerbated by multiple users accessing the IMAP host at the same time ... the IP limit of 4 connections will almost certainly be exceeded. 

Either vendors need to be more frugal with their IMAP connections, or service providers using courier need to be more generous with the defaults (say 8 instead of 4 per IP ... I know a Lunarpages competitor a group I support uses ... who sets the limit to 8, which they've not had issues with ever). 

I've now migrated from Apple Mail to Microsoft Entourage ... not an easy task as we have many addresses in the Addressbook and a number of distributions lists.  Now, while I can have a single computer accessing our accounts at the same time, using a second computer to do the same thing is hitting the limit, something that also was not a problem prior to the mail server "upgrade". 

So, if you are using IMAP and are now having connection issues, this may be why.  I can't believe I am the only one having this issue.  At present, the only option I've been offered is that I should upgrade my account to dedicated hosting, something I'm not willing to do. 

I had a number of exchanges and gave up after the solution offered was that I should upgrade to dedicated hosting.  Consequently I have taken the route of looking for other service providers and am now in the process of moving my domain (my subscription was going to expire next month and I had other reasons to look around anyway). 

I looked at two alternatives and both of them had already changed their limit to 8 connections instead of 4.  Hopefully Lunarpages follows similarly.  I am sure that if they get enough tickets they will see it as a problem and take corrective action, so it is good to open a ticket.  Do post your results. 

There is a limit of connections (generally 4-5) per IP address on the server. This will generally allow you to have for IMAP accounts from a single location access the server at once.

The issue appears to be that mac mail attempts to open multiple connections, per account, in an attempt to offer better stability when connecting. Generally, one connection per account is all that is needed (unless you have connection issues due to unstable connection) , however currently I have been unable to find anyway of limiting via mac mail to open only one connection per account.

Some clients, such as thunderbird, do have an area where you can limit the number of connections that are open per account.

 (link removed as had misunderstood it originally)


Anyone else feel free to try and let me know here and via PM the results?

Currently SSH is not available on the shared servers due to security / stability concerns.

Reread that link i originally posted, your right, thats server end.  Originally when reading, I thought was a mac setting.

i'm having the same issues here. i have multiple emails running with thunderbird, 6 to be exact. and I've been getting connection errors too. I've got a ticket open with them, hopefully things will get figured out on their end.

And I've changed my cached connections per account to 1, but that doesn't help me stay under the limit of 4 with my 6 emails. Plus there is another computer connected with 2 more.

I'm having the same problem that you guys are mentioning, the whole office is having problems with our emails since the upgrade and we've all had about enough of this....

We are all behind the same external IP address (sharing the same internet connection) and we all have at least two email addresses which we need to be connected to all the time during work which means somewhere about 10-20 connections at any given time, and we're all getting disconnected continuously and cannot read our emails properly, its a disaster... I'm on the Hadar server if it even matters...

Has Lunarpages proposed any changes or upgrades to fix this problem other than offering a more expensive hosting plan??

I've had a "Business Plan" from the start, and to me, Business is more than one/two people.... since our office is sharing on an internet connection where everybody has at least 2 email accounts on our domains (currently hosted by Lunarpages), we're all experiencing ALOT of problems when trying to read our emails. This is certainly not acceptable to have problems reading business emails on a so called "Business Plan" account...

I have already started looking for other hosting companies but I'm still waiting for a proper response..... I've always been happy with Lunarpages until now, but this is a problem which has to be solved very soon...