Tag Along Mail's entire network infrastructure is designed around providing the best email service possible. We have built a totally redundant network - there is no single point of failure in our setup. That includes on connectivity, load balancers, all services such as IMAP, POP3, Webmail and SMTP, as well as on backups.
Our servers are configured in a clustered environment. This ensures that if a single server becomes congested, the cluster is able to spread the traffic to other servers and continue providing the same fast experience to all users.
We use reliable software that is well tested before being put into any live environment. Our hardware is thoroughly tested as well before being used. All this helps keep our servers up near 100% of the time.
Physical Security
We're e-mail providers to healthcare providers, lawyers, government contractors and of course, people everywhere who want their e-mail stored in a secure environment.
That's why Tag Along Mail uses Equinix to host our servers. In our opinion (shared by many experts), Equinix is undoubtedly the most secure and professional provider of data center space worldwide. It's customers include all of the big Internet businesses, such as IBM, Electronic Arts, Google, General Electric, Microsoft, Sony and Yahoo!.
If you're interested to know just how extreme their physical security is, read on...
* Center is manned by on-site security, 24/7/365
* All doors, including the cage where Tag Along Mail is located, are secured with biometric hand geometry readers.
* The building has no windows and exterior walls are bullet resistant.
* CCTV digital camera coverage of entire center.
* Entire perimeter bounded by concrete bollards/planters.
* Silent alarm system linked to law enforcement officials.
* All equipment checked upon arrival.
* Shipping and receiving area walled off from collocation areas.
So your data is safe... but what about reliability in the event of a natural disaster, power outage or other such event?
* Redundant HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning), ensuring that our servers and the surrounding environment remain clean and at the right temperature.
* Multi-zoned, dry pipe, water-based fire suppression system with sensory mechanisms to sample air and provide alarms prior to pressurization.
* Flood control: built above sea-level with no basements, tightly sealed conduits, moisture barriers and dedicated pump rooms.
* Earthquake: Building meets or exceeds seismic design requirements of local building codes and all equipment is anchored and braced.
* UPS systems and emergency backup diesel generators with redundancy built into all power backups.
Data Security
We have many security measures in place to help protect the data of our customers:
* Our IMAP, POP3, SMTP and Webmail all support secure sending / receiving. For a full list of port settings, please visit our support page.
* We support TLS so that other servers which also support TLS can connect and deliver mail securely between servers.
* All accounts are password protected.
* SMTP Authentication or POP-before-SMTP are required to access our sending server.
Total Redundancy
Tag Along Mail's system has total redundancy built-in to all services, meaning that there is no single point of failure that could cause immediate downtime to a customer. Some highlights of our built-in redundancy include:
* Redundancy in load balancers. As shown on our network diagram, we have two load balancers installed. However, each one of these load balancers has ample capacity of handling all of our traffic, even at the busiest times.
* Redundancy in data. If anything happens to the server where your data primarily resides (such as a hardware failure), Tag Along Mail will switch to a synced secondary copy, ensuring you experience no downtime.
* Redundancy in connectivity. We don't just utilize two IP Transit providers, but 5, ensuring you'll always be able to reach our network at high speed. See our IP Transit diagram for more information.
Comprehensive monitoring
* Anytime an unexpected event happens anywhere on our network, our network staff are notified by call pager alert.
* We have designed custom health checking service software that monitors device availability and directs network traffic to devices that are online. It also monitors the response time of devices so that we can automatically reduce traffic to devices that are responding slowly and direct more traffic at faster devices, all in real time.
* We also maintain detailed internal infrastructure graphs of all internal systems including disk space, CPU, memory utilization and disk I/O responsiveness.
* We understand that a failure doesn't necessarily mean a complete device outage, so we monitor in real time the disk read/write operations of all data servers on our network. If a read/write operation takes longer than normal, our network staff are notified and our system will automatically suspend non-critical services/operations to this disk, ensuring minimal disruption to other services.
Comprehensive monitoring
* Our network always has ample server resources and disk space to grow.
* We have also created a proxy that will allow for easy addition of servers in other data centers throughout the world. This proxy is designed to detect which data center would provide the fastest speed to a customer based on their location and then automatically store their data at that data center.
IMAP & POP3 Server
Tag Along Mail is designed to scale, this is why when we designed our IMAP & POP3 servers we studied how the most popular email clients implement their IMAP & POP3 client protocols.
The results of this study found that many server operations can be optimized to provide the maximum speed to requesting email clients. In addition the Tag Along Mail IMAP & POP3 server are designed to bolt on additional remote data centers around the country to deliver content closer to the customer resulting in improved speeds. Click here to learn more about what is coming at Tag Along Mail.
Incoming SMTP (MX Record)
Did you know that over 99% of connections from remote sending servers to Tag Along Mail and other networks is undeliverable email? These undeliverable messages present themselves in many forms from dictionary spamming to viruses, and bounce back attacks. Many mail server servers will accept an entire email message before deciding whether it is deliverable.
Tag Along Mail stops incoming messages at the INGRESS or incoming to the network and rejecting the message as soon as they determine the deliverability. In addition Tag Along Mail monitors good vs bad traffic from sending servers. This allows Tag Along Mail to maintain a database of servers that sent very spam free email to servers that sent only spam, and everything in between. Tag Along Mail utilizes this data in an algorithm to determine if blocking of a sending IP network is temporarily necessary. This allows Tag Along Mail to maximize scalability and as a first layer of spam and virus defense.
Outgoing SMTP (Sent email from your email client)
Like all services at Tag Along Mail, Outgoing SMTP is load balanced across a cluster of servers. This ensures that should any one device fail, traffic will be automatically re-routed to an online device. Learn more about egress/off network delivery receipt in our features in the works.
