Inbound SMTP Connections Stacking Up!

[lhuegele]

We are on Exchange 2003 Enterprise running on a 2003 Standard Server. The virtual SMTP server has started stacking up connections to the point where the maximum connections are exceeded and it stops accepting connections. When I check on the current connections, there will be many that are from the same servers, all connected for 10's of thousands of seconds. Our timeout is set to 5 minutes but the SMTP connections are still there long after this timeout setting.

Has anyone else experienced this symptom or do you have any suggestions on how to correct this?

Thanks,
Larry

 

[ShackDaddy]

Look at the size of the items that are being sent, if possible. It could be that everyone in your company and maybe 1000 extra addresses got sent a 10mb file from an outside source, and your system is dying trying to process them all. Sounds like some sort of DOS (denial of service) attack.

Try and verify whether the sending servers are valid, ie, partners of your company.

What happens when you stop and start the SMTP service? What is your connection limit set at?

ShackDaddy