>Here's are my initial thoughts: Len's requires an additional box,
>as it is a FreeBSD solution
While adding MAPS to Imail was my original motivation for IMGate, it
turns out that that is not a dominant advantage. The numerous
benefits of multi-box mail infrastructure is the dominant advantage.
And it could be Linux or Solaris or HP UX or AIX or SCO or other *nix
(ie, ABM, vbg). IMGate is a concept, not a brand/religious war.
>and IMail only runs on NT. As most people know, having an
>additional box to hold your inbound mail in the case of an NT
>failure can be very useful until you recover/reboot your IMail server.
Think of Imail box as the "Customer service / front-office box", the
interface your customers touch in real-time, for POP3 / SMTP AUTH /
Web Messaging. Think of IMGate as back-office / plumbing (sewers,
even!). You need to keep the front-office as responisve and as
reliable as possible. It's the money maker.
I'm a bigot against too much ("two" is two much) function in one box,
esp with the prices of recently retired but excellent boxes and $100
500 MHz celerons these days and all the great open source software
around. These semi-old boxes are even more excellent if you run *nix
in them and so don't waste so much MHz and memory for GUI.
Backup MX in case of Imail failure is only one advantage of 2nd (or
more) boxes.
IMGate offloading from Imail all SMTP plumbing for incoming/outgoing
(and esp the nastily spiky list deliveries) greatly liberates Imail
for the front-office chores.
Global filitering, access control lists (both with full RegEx),
anti-relay defense, DNS lookups, presence in DNS MX records, all
relay/ETRN traffic for your downstreams are also off-loaded from the Imail box.
Imail is left with just front-office functions of POP/LDAP/IMAP/SMTP
AUTH and the machine-expensive Web messaging so many of your
customers are so fond of.
>On the spam-control side, Len's solution is limited to the MAPS database
no, you can have any number of these four blacklists:
maps_rbl_domains = rbl.maps.vix.com, rss.maps.vix.com,
relays.orbs.org, dul.maps.vix.com
Semi-vaporware announcement:
It's taken longer than I intended, but I now have a definite, "it's
been done" extension based on IMGate, but it's not on the IMGate site
yet and I haven't built it myself, but a postfix ace has and says it
works great.
YAB (yet another box) for "content filitering", ie, anti-virus. This
will be an IMGate machine ("behind" the mail gateways and in front of
Imail) + the AV product www.KasperskyLab.com for FreeBSD (or Linux) servers:
http://www.kaspersky.com/products.asp?tgroup=0&pgroup=3&id=34
For just $99, Kaspersky has confirmed that the a-v product for
FreeBSD/Linux servers is unlimited license for any number of
mailboxes and domains. Compare with $30K for TrendMicro. I love
Russian capitalism!! vbg
Kaspersky's been around a few years, got some good press, even John
Dvorak likes them! So Kaspersky's "Good Enough" for me. btw,
per-domain a-v scanning option for your customers is a revenue
opportunity, $xx per yyy megatbytes per month kind of idea.
They don't even have to be your curent customers. Anybody with a mail
server (who's paid you) can just point their MX at your IMGate,
benefit from it anti-spam etc, get scrubbed of viruses, and get
forwarded to their obfuscated mail server.
And of course if you get really BIG, you can build as many IMGate
mail hubs and a-v scanners as you need. ie, very scaleable and redundant.
Len
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