Good morning!
On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 16:11:23 -0000
"Grant, John" <John.S.Grant@ds-s.com> wrote:
What's everyone using at the moment?
A well configured Postfix MTA with a number of RBLs plus a few custom
access blocks, doing filtering via AV and bayes-spamfilter. On Linux.
Rejection-rate early in SMTP dialogue at 95%, the ones getting through
the first stage are ~20% SPAM (but get marked) and ~1% viruses
(filtered).
All advice welcome.....gotta move towards a hardware based mail gw
soon and wanna get some idea's from you lot please!
I've yet to see a "hardware-based" mail gw. I do know pre-packed servers
and mail appliances (i.e. "all in a closed box" systems), but I've not
seen any SMTP-in-ASIC (thus "real hardware") mail gateways. If I missed
one, pointers are highly welcome.
So why do you need a "hardware based" system? I think that is the wrong
starting point.
*First* list your *functional* requirements, ranked/priorized.
*Then* look at systems that you fulfil your *functional* needs.
I guess you either might have performance problems (myth: hardware is
faster than software) or an admin that is not knowledgeable enough or
only part-time available (myth: appliances are buy-and-run).
Performance problems? Are you sure it's the mail server's "horsepower"?
Or maybe it's your internet connection, that is congested? Or your
architecture (forwarding-MTA without RBLs and the main mail server
bouncing all the fake NDNs)? Architectural problems usually cannot be
tackled with a different box anyway, so your selection may be moot.
Feature or administration problems? Maybe a proper training for your
admin can help - and usually will be cheaper and longer lasting than
just buying a box. Or maybe you might decide to go for a managed mail
solution (a la GMAIL for companies). For your boss "outsourcing the
email service" probably will sound better than "we should use GMAIL".
;-)
In short: don't focus on a solution before you defined and priorized
your requirements.
Bye
Volker
--
Volker Tanger http://www.wyae.de/volker.tanger/
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