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Understanding the new AOL IM filtering rates


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Some of you hopefully read the posts and technotes regarding the new filtering rates that AOL has deployed against chats coming through the Clearinghouse.  Well I started getting emails and pings asking what it all meant.  So to honor everyone's requests, I did some digging around with AOL people to get some answers:

  • The rate limit numbers are not linear
  • The rate limit numbers are built dynamically with an algorithm, meaning each company will be different
  • If you run a bot that does heavy traffic, like an automated helpdesk or query bot, through your Sametime Gateway into the Clearinghouse, you may contact AOL to have it provisioned

So as you see there is no hard numbers per customer, per connected Sametime Gateway.  It is a dynamically changing rate based upon your normal usage.  Now I know they do not have 40 guys that are there doing simple math charts.  Which means that if you suddenly spike the amount of traffic you are sending through the gateway into the AOL Clearinghouse, you might get limited down until they figure out what is going on.  Meaning you might end up calling them.  So if you are implementing a new bot, I would get in touch with them and get it provisioned first

Make sense?  If not let me know.