IP Connections

SmarterMail will monitor the IP addresses connecting to the server and display the number of connections to the server each IP has made, as a whole or to the different syncing protocols, including SMTP, IMAP, POP, XMPP, EAS, MAPI & EWS, and WebDAV. System administrators can then use this section to blacklist a certain IP address or drop an IP's current connection if they believe too many connections are being made. Current IP connections can be viewed all at once or separated by protocol. It's worth noting that the numbers displayed in each tab (i.e., SMTP, IMAP, POP, etc.) is the total connections, not, say, the total number of IP addresses that are connecting. So if the IMAP tab displays a "7", that means there's 7 total IMAP connections, which could be from 1 or more IP addresses.

In addition, the number displayed on the IP Connections menu may not match, exactly, with the number displayed on the All Connections tab once you go to the page. This is because the count in the navigation menu is updated at a set interval whereas the count on the All Connections tab is static when you open it, then changes when you click the Refresh button. As a result, while the counts may not always be in sync, the count on the menu is an indicator of activity and can therefore alert system administrators that something may be worth investigating if that number is abnormally high.

When viewing connections, the following columns are available:

IP Address - The IP address of the user connecting.
Country - The country associated with the IP address.
Port - The port the user is connecting on. Generally, this will remain constant when viewing connections by protocol. However, some alternate ports may be displayed as well.
IP Connections - The number of connections from the IP address listed. Multiple connections can occur when a user is connecting to their account via email clients spread across multiple devices.
SSL/TLS - Whether the connection is secured via TLS or SSL.

The following buttons/actions are available, regardless of which tab is being viewed:

Refresh - Refreshes the list of online users.
Actions (⋮) - Additional actions are available via this dropdown:

Blacklist - Adds the IP address to the server blacklist file.
Drop Connections - End the selected user's session.

Regarding connections that appear to last longer than they should, this could be due to a number of reasons. For example, SMTP connections that stay active for hours could be due to multiple people connecting from behind a firewall. These people all appear to connect from a single IP, but they're actually individual connections, one for each user. The firewall simply portrays the connections as being from a single source. In addition, some numbers may always show up as 0. For example, EWS and MAPI tabs will only show connections when users connecting via those protocols are actually attempting to connect and are pulling or pushing a sync. MAPI and EWS don't IDLE like EAS or IMAP, so the numbers will fluctuate or possibly show 0.