BlitzMail

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BlitzMail is an e-mail system used at Dartmouth College. It was one of the earliest e-mail server/client packages. It became massively popular at the College owing to its simplicity and power that appealed to even the most non-technical of users.

Contents

[edit] History

BlitzMail was developed by the College in 1987 and went live in the summer of 1988. Today's BlitzMail is descended from this codebase.

The name BlitzMail started as a joke among its programmers, as it had to be developed quickly.

In 1991, when Dartmouth required every student to own a computer, the server code was updated to allow multiple servers to accommodate the heavy demand for the system. In 1993, the server was rewritten to support mail folders, a necessity. In 1994, the client and server software was released for use outside of Dartmouth. Some non-Dartmouth BlitzMail deployments include Valley.Net, an internet service provider in New England's Upper Valley region and Reed College in Portland, OR.

The first versions of the client ran only on the Apple Macintosh operating system. The client was ported to Windows around the time of Windows 3.1.

Dartmouth College officially chose to halt development on BlitzMail in 2004. (With the exception of bug fixes, neither client nor server software has seen major updates since the late 1990s.) The college plans to slowly transition away from BlitzMail to another client — likely Mozilla Thunderbird.

Developers at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Memorial Hospital have continued to maintain the Windows client, and an SSL-enabled client is rumored to be forthcoming. Recent releases of the client have experimental support for rendering (but not composing) HTML-based messages.

At Reed College, meanwhile, which had used Blitz since 1991, the 2004-2005 school year marked the final year in which BlitzMail was available. IMAP addresses were issued to all incoming students in the class of 2008, and current users were warned that they would have to switch before the Fall 2005 semester.

[edit] BlitzMail On Campus

A 'BlitzMail culture' exists on the Dartmouth College campus. The system has all but replaced on-campus landline telephone use for local communication, and provides direct and immediate contact between students, professors and administrators. Official announcements are sent via the system, as well as more-informal ones from organizations about upcoming events, parties, and the like. Strange as it may sound, BlitzMail is a key ingredient of the Dartmouth social scene.

Approximately 100 public terminals are located around campus (in libraries, dining halls, and academic buildings) for BlitzMail use. In 2001, a pinkeye epidemic erupted on campus, spread in large part by the use of keyboards at these public terminals.

The campus is also blanketed in a wireless network, and most students have laptops. The result is that BlitzMail is accessible nearly anywhere.

The word blitz has become a noun (an e-mail) and a verb (to e-mail — "I'll blitz you!") in campus slang. Most students check blitz on an (at least) hourly basis. Another unique phenomenon is the blitz war--which occurs when a message is sent to a large group of recipients without using the optional feature to hide them. In a blitz war, messages are sent to the entire list, with the purpose of annoying others. Hundreds of responses to the list can be generated in an hour in a heated war.

Very recently, cell phones have become a much more important ingredient in the social scene, as the erection of nearby cell towers allows good signals and many students prefer not to wait in lines for sometimes busy Blitz terminals.

[edit] The BlitzMail Client

The BlitzMail client is graphical, and runs on Windows and Macintosh computers. Several Java implementations exist, as well as web-based clients, such as NetBlitz and WebBlitz. The client has not had major updates since the late 1990s, with the exception of a port to Mac OS X. The client does not officially support HTML-based e-mail, dealing only in plaintext. (HTML files are viewed as attachments.)

One of the program's strengths is its portability for users. A user's mailbox, address book, and preferences are all stored on the server. Any user can log into any installation of the client and have full access to their data. After a user logs out, no data or personalization is stored on the local machine. This feature allows the use of the many public terminals.

BlitzMail also acts as a pseudo-instant messaging client. Messages are processed by the server and delivered to the recipient almost immediately.

The program also has great strength in its integration with the Dartmouth Name Directory, or DND. With this, users simply type the name of the recipient in the To: field (for example, Throckmorton P. Scribblemonger, and the DND determines the full e-mail address of the intended recipient (throckmorton.p.scribblemonger@dartmouth.edu, in this example.) The DND also allows users to create any number of aliases for their blitz address (for example, 'throckie', or 'tps') that require less typing. However, Theresa P. Schultz, should she enter 'tps' as her alias, would prevent Throckie (and herself) from receiving such mail. Only the fully-qualified name guarantees delivery. (theresa.p.schultz@dartmouth.edu or throckmorton.p.scribblemonger@dartmouth.edu)

[edit] Technical Specifications

BlitzMail speaks its own protocol between client and server. Thus, the BlitzMail client is the only one that can utilize the full feature-set of the server.

Messages entering and leaving the BlitzMail domain are handled via SMTP. As of 2004, patches were available that allowed clients to connect to a BlitzMail server via POP3 and IMAP (with SSL.) The client communicates to the server on TCP ports 2151 and 1119 and the notification service runs on UDP port 2154.

In 2002, SpamAssassin functionality was added to BlitzMail. The DND server was also modified to allow LDAP lookups.

The BlitzMail and DND servers run on DEC Unix and many Linux flavors. The OS must support POSIX threading or Mach kernel-style cthreads. The server will run on systems with very low hardware requirements.

The BlitzMail servers have run on a variety of hardware at Dartmouth. In the early 1990s, the mail and DND servers ran on 25 MHz NeXT cubes named after Santa Claus' reindeer. At the time, BlitzMail's performance was nearly unparalleled; hundreds of sessions could be handled on each machine. Later, the servers were migrated to DEC Alpha 3000/300s.

[edit] Python Port

A Python library implementation called PyBlitz was released in 2006 by Michael Fromberger. While not a client in and of itself, the package provides bindings that may be used to write one.

[edit] Redistribution

The BlitzMail client and server software are available under a GPL-like open source license.

[edit] Developers

BlitzMail's developers include Rich Brown, David Gelhar, Jim Matthews, Pete Schmitt, Steve Campbell, Steve Ligett, Paul Merchant, Kevin Schofield, Jim Van Verth, and David Greenfield.

The Blitzmail Bulletins feature was designed by Nancy Hossfeld and Randy Spydell.

The Windows version of the BlitzMail client was developed by Doug Hornig.

[edit] External links

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