[Dovecot] dovecot slowing down

[P.A]

Hi, not really a dovecot issue but, im running dovecot 1.0.10 with no issues
for awhile now J.

 

However  I ran into an issue today where postfix didn't have enough
processes to handle incoming smtp connections.  This for whatever reason was
causing pop/imap (dovecot) to take a long time to respond on the appropriate
port.


After looking at server and finding nothing wrong I stopped postfix which
got rid of the delay on port 110/143. I then turned on postfix again and saw
the delay for port 25/110/143. What I then did was adjust/increase the
default_process_limit in postfix which took care of the problem.

Question is why would not enough processes in postfix slow other services
down like dovecot 110/143? There was plenty of bandwith/mem/cpu left.