Webmail applications that are kind to the IMAP server?

[Gary Mills]

We recently did a test of the IMP e-mail web application with fifteen
simultaneous users, who were instructed to use IMP as rapidly as they
could.  The load average on our Cyrus/sendmail mail server rose to 14,
with `imapd' processes consuming most of the CPU.  I'm assuming that
this happened because IMP starts a new IMAP session for each web
transaction initiated by the user.

Are there any e-mail web applications that are better behaved, in that
they utilize a single IMAP session for the duration of the user's web
session?  Are they otherwise as attractive as IMP?

Are there ways to improve the performance of Cyrus when it's being
used by ill-behaved web applications?  Can Cyrus defend itself against
this sort of IMAP activity?

-- 
-Gary Mills-    -Unix Support-    -U of M Academic Computing and Networking-