New Transport Functionality

The following is a list of new or improved transport and routing functionality that's included in Microsoft Exchange Server 2010:

  • MailTips   MailTips provide extra information that's displayed to senders while they're composing e-mail messages. MailTips provide information about the messages such as details about the recipients and their availability, or reasons the message wouldn't be delivered. For example, if the person the message is addressed to is out of the office, senders will be informed about this while they're composing the message. To learn more about MailTips, see Understanding MailTips.
  • Shadow redundancy   Messages that are submitted to an Exchange 2010 Hub Transport server are stored in the transport database until the next hop reports successful delivery of the message. If the next hop doesn't report successful delivery and it fails, the message is resubmitted for delivery. To learn more about shadow redundancy, see Understanding Shadow Redundancy.
  • Moderated transport   Exchange 2010 provides an approval workflow for sending messages to recipients. When you configure a recipient for moderation, all messages sent to that recipient must go through an approval process. To learn more about moderated transport, see Understanding Moderated Transport.
  • End-to-end message tracking   Exchange 2010 transport provides users with the ability to track messages from submission to the final destination. There is a new message tracking tool that makes it easy for any user role, from end-user to administrator, to track messages. For more information, see Understanding Message Tracking.
  • Support for disabling TLS for WAN topologies   In certain topologies where WAN Optimization Controller (WOC) devices are used, the TLS encryption of SMTP traffic may be undesirable. Exchange 2010 supports disabling TLS for hub-to-hub communications for these specific scenarios. For more information, see Disabling TLS Between Active Directory Sites to Support WAN Optimization.
  • Incremental EdgeSync   In Exchange 2010, the EdgeSync process has been changed to keep track of synchronized information and only synchronize the changes since the last replication cycle. This significantly reduces network traffic and greatly improves synchronization efficiency. For more information, see Understanding Edge Subscriptions.
  • Transport rule predicates and actions   Transport rules inspect messages for conditions specified in the rules. Messages that meet the conditions, and none of the exceptions, get the specified actions applied to them. Exchange 2010 includes several new predicates and actions, providing additional flexibility in creating rules and additional options for actions that can be applied to messages. For more information, see Transport Rule Predicates and Transport Rule Actions.
  • Transport rule cmdlet improvements   The New-TransportRule and Set-TransportRule cmdlets have been enhanced, allowing you to specify all predicates and actions in a single command. All predicates and actions are now available for use as parameters with these cmdlets. For more information, see New-TransportRule and Set-TransportRule.
  • Transport rules integration with AD RMS   Exchange 2010 provides you the ability to create rules that require Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS) protection based on keywords or patterns. For more information, see Understanding Transport Protection Rules.
  • Distribution group expansion improvements   The handling of distribution group expansion has improved in Exchange 2010. First, the amount of memory that's used for caching distribution group membership has been capped by a configurable limit. This change prevents the cache from consuming too much memory, and thereby impacting performance in large environments. Exchange 2010 also queries Active Directory in a more efficient manner when processing large distribution groups with delivery restrictions, improving the performance of message delivery to large distribution groups.
  • Message throttling improvements   In Exchange 2010, you can configure a Receive connector to monitor the rate of message submissions by users, IP addresses, or both. If you configure a Receive connector to monitor the message submission rate for users, it ensures that a specific user doesn't exceed the message rate that it's allowed, regardless of the IP address the connections are coming from. The default client Receive connector created on the Hub Transport servers is configured this way.
  • Latency management   With Exchange 2010 transport, you can measure service levels delivered relative to your service level agreement (SLA) goals. Exchange 2010 provides you the ability to measure latencies for each hop, as well as end-to-end latency.