Commercial Product

[Martin Hepworth]

Pete
in two words..

false positives

I deliver ALL email to all valid users (except viruses and other 
potential malware). The MUA can then filter intp a spam folder for 
anything SA *thinks* is spam.

Sometimes it gets it wrong - not very often at all, but it does - as do 
commercial products. Various commercial products handle spam/virues etc 
in different ways. Some allow you to setup users so they can check via a 
www interface all the blocked mail (a pain when you get over 500 a day!) 
or an admin had to do it (a pain when over 90% of your email is spam).

 From personal experience I find it more useful to deliver the email 
then the user can't complain they haven't received it.

Bandwidth isn't really  the expensive these days and beside I run a 
Packeteer Packetshaper to make sure email is low priority anyhow - other 
free products can be used but at the time I was in a hurry (took me less 
than 3 hours from product arrival to it doing its job, not bad 
considering I'd never seen one before!).

$3,500 on a server is quite alot, I've got a 600mhz celeron (spare from 
R&D!) for my email and its tops about at about 1700 messages an 
hour..depends how fast a box you need - two smaller boxes with same MX 
value will give you redunancy should one croak.

Also how much will they charge a year for this commercial product. Our 
100 of so users would cost us £5000 a year from MessageLabs for spam and 
virus. TCO over 5 years is £25,000 + admin time to check for FP's. 
MS+SA+Sophos+Clam 5 year TCO is ~£3500 for the Sophos, and about 30 
minutes of my time a week checking for SA,clam, MS updates and 
installing where needed (+ each user to check for FP's should they 
wish). So direct measureable cost as far the Financial director is 
concerned is far better with MS.


--
Martin Hepworth
Snr Systems Administrator
Solid State Logic
Tel: +44 (0)1865 842300


Pete wrote:
> Kris Zabriskie wrote:
> 
>> Julian,
>> I have been coming across a lot of commercial spam products.  Most of the
>> ones I have seen have been simple 1U rack mounts, that act as a mail
>> pre-processor I believe.  I have often asked myself, I wonder what 
>> software
>> they run in there.  Are you aware of any companies that have just tossed
>> together a 1U rack mount, and tossed MailScanner on it?
>>
>> Kris Zabriskie
>> I-Tech Inc.
>> Network Admin / Consultant
>> http://www.itech.net
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> We get a LOT of mail regarding people providn gthis service offsite. My
> boss wants me to justify why i prefer to buy a $3500 server and put in
> the effort and hours to combat spam, when these guys can do it offsite
> saving us the bandwitdth of never receiving the spam...any tips for me ?

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