10 gmail accounts all fwd to eachother

would this crash the system?

[stef24]

just out of intrest: what would happen if i had 10 gmail accounts, all configured to forward emails to eachother?

one email gets sent to 10 adresses, which would all forward them to 10 adresses. 10 adresses would receive 10 emails each, which would all 10 be forwarded to 10 adresses etc.

it would not take long before a billion emails are going through the system ...

[encyclo]

Gmail bounces incoming messages once you hit the 1000Mb limit, and like all properly-configured email servers, the system will almost certainly discard any bounced bounces. So no, the system won't grind to a halt, simply the cycle will stop when the 10 mailboxes are full.

[Sanenet]

Only one way to find out....

please tell us before commencing on your new destructive hobby so we can backup - we may be barbarians, but that doesn't mean we can't be civilised barbarians :)

[grelmar]

Hmmm...

I'm thinking that the folks at the googleplex would have thought of this already, and probably have it covered.

Better way to take 'em down, and harder for them to detect, would be to have 100 accounts, each forwarding to 10, with no two accounts forwarding directly back to each other.

You could achieve the same algorythmic growth in traffic, but it would last ten times as long before the boxes would fill up, and also it would be much harder for their servers to detect.

Just talking theory here.

[Mardi_Gras]

>>Better way to take 'em down,

So much for professional discourse in the forums - now WebmasterWorld is reduced to discussions of ways to crash GoogleMail? How far we've come :(

[grelmar]

eh, it's foo. No one here is likely to do more than theorize.

Aside from that, it's important to think about these things. Simple configuration gaffs are the most likely to lead to server meltdowns. Most of us here have made simple mistakes that have had catastrophic results. It's nice to dream that the "greater minds" at Google, etc, are prone to the same foibles as the rest of us.

_{now I wonder how long it would take to internally generate 100 invites to GMail for myself... hmmmm...}

[graywolf]

Better way to take 'em down, and harder for them to detect, would be to have 100 accounts, each forwarding to 10, with no two accounts forwarding directly back to each other.

So would you have 1 forward to 2, 2 for to 3, 3 forward to 4, etc.

or

1 forward to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90. The 2-9 would forward to 22 thru 29, etc. Then have 99 forward back to 1?

See I actually did learn something from the Stephan Wolfram book.

[grelmar]

1 or ending in 1 Forward to 2 and all ending in 2...

2 or ending in 2 Forward to 3 and all ending in 3...

etc, until you get to 10, and all endinding in 0, which forward to 1 and all ending in 1.

Or any other such scheme. If you really wanted to have fun you could go:

1 forward to 2, 13, 24, 35, 46, 57, 68, 79, 90, 11
2 forward to 3, 14, 25, 36, 47, 58, 69, 80, 91, 12

or 1 forward to 2, 22, 42, 62, 82, 13, 33, 53, 73, 93

Hmmm... I could have fun just coming up with different sequences.