Why I think RBL should be done with the MTA rather than Mailscann er

[Julian Field]

At 10:13 25/06/2002, you wrote:
>- - Perhaps of maximum importance to me, you have complete control of
>your mail relaying policies through sendmail itself - for example, I
>want to use the MAPS Dial up list to block direct mailing to my
>servers from diaul up users.  However, I don't want to stop valid
>University users at home on their dialup connections from sending mail
>through my servers.  The answer - implement SMTP Authentication
>(already done!) and only reject IP addresses in the MAPS Dial Up list
>if the user hasn't first authenticated themselves with a valid
>username and password.  How would you do this in Mailscanner?

"Accept Spam From = 152.78."

>Can anybody see any advantages to using the RBL lists on Mailscanner
>instead of on the MTA directly?  I'd like to hear the flip side of the
>debate!

In cases where the spam traps get it wrong, the user still gets the mail.

>Here's a feature for you Jules... How about making "plug in" module
>support for each MTA, spam features, Spam Assassin, Virus scanner, etc
>- by which I mean you only load the code which you need for the
>features and software that you are using.  No, don't ask me how you'd
>do that :)

This should appear as part of the big code-rewrite that is just about to start.
--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ