Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Steven Dickenson wrote: You might be able to get your security group to take responsibility for it. Many enterprises now consider first-line email servers something of an application-level proxy, particularly first-line servers that handle spam and malware filtering. In these cases, they're usually handled by the security department. I handle the security for the most part. However, it's a decision that's out of my hands. Besides which if things do go wrong I can't take any of the blame for it ;) I would imagine given the choice of an Exchange front-end server vs. a Linux-based SMTP gateway, they'd jump for the later. Absolutely. But the in thing these days is shared calendars. Yes, there is indeed many solutions that can be implemented in Linux but (a) the IT department doesn't have much Linux experience if at all, (b) the users of the shared calendaring system are mainly Windows users running Outlook anyway and (c) the email/communication systems is more of an IT thing than the department that I work for (we manage production systems rather than IT related stuff - the only reason we ended up running the mail system was due to the IT's lack of Linux/mail server experience so many years ago). M.
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Martyn Drake wrote: Ironically, after many years of faithful Linux use we're going down the Exchange route and mail handling to be given over to another department. I doubt we'll see a SA Linux box there. Oh well. I'm used to disapointments over the years, so it wasn't too much of a surprise to me. You might be able to get your security group to take responsibility for it. Many enterprises now consider first-line email servers something of an application-level proxy, particularly first-line servers that handle spam and malware filtering. In these cases, they're usually handled by the security department. I would imagine given the choice of an Exchange front-end server vs. a Linux-based SMTP gateway, they'd jump for the later. - S
RE: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Steven Dickenson wrote:
> Eric A. Hall wrote:
>>
>> simple click-the-button GUI,
>
> apt-get install exim4-daemon-heavy spamassassin clamav-daemon razor
Steven, I don't think you give yourself enough credit :)
--
Matthew.van.Eerde (at) hbinc.com 805.964.4554 x902
Hispanic Business Inc./HireDiversity.com Software Engineer
perl -e"map{y/a-z/l-za-k/;print}shift" "Jjhi pcdiwtg Ptga wprztg,"
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Eric A. Hall wrote: Every filtering system requires admin time, and if the reviews don't say as much then they're junk. There is a critical difference with SA, however, which is that the admins need to be proficient at stuff like CPAN, Perl, etc., while some of the packaged offerings provide simple click-the-button GUI, and those can have significantly lower salary associations. I know next to nothing about Perl, and trying to grok someone elses Perl makes my eyes bleed, and I have a rather bad-ass little SA box filtering mail like a banshee. It was easy to install... apt-get install exim4-daemon-heavy spamassassin clamav-daemon razor Debian is your friend. :) However, you make a good point. Setting up a box takes at least a little *nix knowledge, or at least the ability to look for good documentation and learn quickly. There are many howtos out there that can pretty much bring a newbie up to speed in a matter of hours. One thing that is definitely missing is a Linux-based CD-bootable distro that creates a mail filtering gateway, similar to some of the firewall distros (IP-Cop, for example). I won't even get into the whole salary association thing, I work at a private school, so I'm already on the low-end of the pay scale. Can't beat the hours, though. - S
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Lima Union wrote: Any idea how many 'commercial solutions' depend on SA ? The Barracuda does IIRC and doesn't MessageLabs also use SA (amongst other things)? Regards, Martyn
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
David B Funk wrote: Yes, but don't forget, while Kevin was "on hold" waiting for his SA support message -he- got to pick the music that he listened to rather than being forced to listen to the commercial vender's 'elevator muzak' and ads, makes the price all the easier to take. ;) That probably makes SA worth it in employee mental health alone... :-D -- Kelson Vibber SpeedGate Communications
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 09:33:54AM -0700, Justin Mason wrote: The Wiki page http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/CommercialProducts lists a whole bunch. Anything listed there uses SpamAssassin, as that's a condition of listing ;) Although not listed I'm pretty sure that Astaro uses SA. -- Neil Watson | Gentoo Linux Network Administrator | Uptime 7 days http://watson-wilson.ca | 2.6.11.4 AMD Athlon(tm) MP 2000+ x 2
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
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Lima Union writes:
> On 5/27/05, aecioneto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > >2 hours is better than an hour and a half?
> > > >
> > > >{O,o} (Yes, I know that you were free to do other stuff while "on
> > > >hold" with SpamAssassin. The numbers just sort of tickled me.)
>
> Hi there,
>
> Any idea how many 'commercial solutions' depend on SA ?
The Wiki page http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/CommercialProducts
lists a whole bunch. Anything listed there uses SpamAssassin,
as that's a condition of listing ;)
- --j.
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Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
On 5/27/05, aecioneto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > >2 hours is better than an hour and a half?
> > >
> > >{O,o} (Yes, I know that you were free to do other stuff while "on
> > >hold" with SpamAssassin. The numbers just sort of tickled me.)
> >
> >
Hi there,
Any idea how many 'commercial solutions' depend on SA ?
Regards.
RE: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
> >2 hours is better than an hour and a half?
> >
> >{O,o} (Yes, I know that you were free to do other stuff while "on
> >hold" with SpamAssassin. The numbers just sort of tickled me.)
>
>
> Well, of course, let's assume another 30 minutes for the second level support
> person to finally fix my problem. So it works out to two hours either way,
> but in one way I have to listen to terrible hold music and put up with the
> annoyance of dealing with a first level support person who blindly follows a
> script: "Please click start. Now click Shut down. Now click on restart."
>
> Also, while I know you were just being faecetious, part of what I wanted to
> point out was that when you use SA you have direct access to the developers
> themselves along with a host of users who administer SA in real world
> environments. You'll never NEVER get anything like that from a proprietary
> vendor.
I have an interesting experience about MS: I have been using MS money (no
jokes, please!) for years.
Out of nowhere, I noticed it was reporting "mad" numbers about projected future
budget in one or some of its built-in reports.
Then, I had the wonderful idea to call MS support. I told them all info about
my issue and it took a week or two for them to call me back (or I had to call
them again, don't recall now).
So, I was told only way to try to solve it was sending them my money file (5
years of all my transactions, investments, savings etc etc). NO WAY!!
A few days later - not believing they don't have the answer - I found the
issue/solution I had in their knowledge base.
The point is:
1. I support open source because I believe many the solutions are much more
stable and better in a general way than many, many commercial solutions -
forget about those highly customized appliance using OS code.
2. There was never a problem I had that I wasn't able to solve posting to some
list or searching for it.
3. I completely agree with commercial support that *really* works (does this
exists?). Most of products/solutions - IT only, of course - have a support cost
inside final product price. They charge you for that, but I haven't seen any
good feedback when I needed it.
(From my experience it was about 4-5 calls in my entire life! Never got a
definitive answer for them...I found all answers browsing the web or testing
myself)
Because of answers I got from my post, we have that open source or SA itself is
not visible to the market (MS market...you name it) as a solution to problems.
You need to have it embedded in a "solution for all your spam problems with 0
false positives garanteed" for someone to take it serious.
Unfortunately, I *need* to mention that open source is still in the hands of
technicians (like me and many of you, I am sure ) all around and not really
going into corporate/market *with reliability*.
If they, out there, would take SA and open source as a seriuos, mature, stable
etc solution they MUST SEE it as a real competitor to many appliance and spam
engines available.
Sorry folks, because I am quite fustated that such comparison did never take
place.
Regards.
__
UOL Fone: Fale com o Brasil e o Mundo com até 90% de economia.
http://www.uol.com.br/fone
RE: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
> >2 hours is better than an hour and a half?
> >
> >{O,o} (Yes, I know that you were free to do other stuff while "on
> >hold" with SpamAssassin. The numbers just sort of tickled me.)
>
>
> Well, of course, let's assume another 30 minutes for the second level support
> person to finally fix my problem. So it works out to two hours either way,
> but in one way I have to listen to terrible hold music and put up with the
> annoyance of dealing with a first level support person who blindly follows a
> script: "Please click start. Now click Shut down. Now click on restart."
>
> Also, while I know you were just being faecetious, part of what I wanted to
> point out was that when you use SA you have direct access to the developers
> themselves along with a host of users who administer SA in real world
> environments. You'll never NEVER get anything like that from a proprietary
> vendor.
>
__
UOL Fone: Fale com o Brasil e o Mundo com até 90% de economia.
http://www.uol.com.br/fone
RE: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Title: RE: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
>2 hours is better than an hour and a half?
>
>{O,o} (Yes, I know that you were free to do other stuff while "on
> hold" with SpamAssassin. The numbers just sort of tickled me.)
Well, of course, let's assume another 30 minutes for the second level support person to finally fix my problem. So it works out to two hours either way, but in one way I have to listen to terrible hold music and put up with the annoyance of dealing with a first level support person who blindly follows a script: "Please click start. Now click Shut down. Now click on restart."
Also, while I know you were just being faecetious, part of what I wanted to point out was that when you use SA you have direct access to the developers themselves along with a host of users who administer SA in real world environments. You'll never NEVER get anything like that from a proprietary vendor.
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
JamesDR wrote: As far as ease of setup? When I first started with SA I was more of the doze admin than the Linux admin. I've been doing Linux stuff since around 1996/1997 and have my own dedicated server that I get to ruin^H^H^H^play with before rolling it across work-related matters. I'd been using SpamAssassin for some time in a personal capacity and in fact it was probably one of my first suggestsions at work that we use it. The typical argument of having people maintain it versus an appliance did come into play. Ironically, after many years of faithful Linux use we're going down the Exchange route and mail handling to be given over to another department. I doubt we'll see a SA Linux box there. Oh well. I'm used to disapointments over the years, so it wasn't too much of a surprise to me. As for upkeep, SA hasn't given me much work to do to be quite honest. It pretty much runs itself and the mail server hasn't so much as bulked with the workload yet. I've never had any complaints about it's ability to detect/catch spam or false positives. And has been said by a few others - you can't buy the kind of support (of which many of the appliance vendors wanted outrageous sums to be given over to them) that you get here or mostly any other public mailing list/forum/newsgroup for that matter. M.
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
On Thu, 26 May 2005, jdow wrote:
> From: "Kevin Peuhkurinen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
[snip..]
> > putting me on hold for another 30+ minutes while they try to track down
> > a second level support person.
>
> That's 30 minutes
>
> > On the other hand, I had a question about SpamAssassin the other day
> > that I couldn't figure out so I posted to this list. Within two hours
> > one of the developers had responded. You just can't buy that kind of
> > support.
>
> 2 hours is better than an hour and a half?
>
> {O,o} (Yes, I know that you were free to do other stuff while "on
> hold" with SpamAssassin. The numbers just sort of tickled me.)
Yes, but don't forget, while Kevin was "on hold" waiting for his
SA support message -he- got to pick the music that he listened to
rather than being forced to listen to the commercial vender's 'elevator
muzak' and ads, makes the price all the easier to take. ;)
--
Dave Funk University of Iowa
College of Engineering
319/335-5751 FAX: 319/384-0549 1256 Seamans Center
Sys_admin/Postmaster/cell_adminIowa City, IA 52242-1527
#include
Better is not better, 'standard' is better. B{
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
From: "Kevin Peuhkurinen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> If that's not bad enough, I find most support from proprietary software
> vendors to be the pits. We have Mcafee's Enterprise Anti-Virus suite
> with a support contract. However, I hate calling them because I tend
> to have to wait 30+ minutes on hold just to speak to a first level
That's 30 minutes
> support person who knows less about the product than I do who forces me
> to walk through all the steps I've already done before giving up and
Let's say that's 30 minutes of step walking
> putting me on hold for another 30+ minutes while they try to track down
> a second level support person.
That's 30 minutes
> On the other hand, I had a question about SpamAssassin the other day
> that I couldn't figure out so I posted to this list. Within two hours
> one of the developers had responded. You just can't buy that kind of
> support.
2 hours is better than an hour and a half?
{O,o} (Yes, I know that you were free to do other stuff while "on
hold" with SpamAssassin. The numbers just sort of tickled me.)
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Martyn Drake wrote: Aecio F. Neto wrote: Is there any *good* and *trustable* comparison between SA and other commercial solutions? I looked into a few dedicated commercial spam appliances, but most (but not all) of which used a customised version of SpamAssassin as part of their detection process anyway. MessageLabs was outrageously expensive, and we didn't particularly want to have mail going through third-party servers. In the end it was far better to do it myself with SpamAssassin, RDJ, limited RBL and a few other tweaks, and that's how it's been so far. Regards, Martyn As far as ease of setup? When I first started with SA I was more of the doze admin than the Linux admin. I read the directions, and could figure out stuff for myself. If their box/software goes titsup (like anything tends to do) are they going to be there that second to fix it? I'd guess no. So you would be either left wide open, or block business. And yes, you could do a really expensive clustering etc with their equipment/sw but what does this bring you? The black box. You plug it in, hope it works, and if it doesn't you are at the mercy of 'them' (men in the black suits ;-D ) So from ease of install (started at 2.5) from the get go, if you read the directions, and some of the how-tos out there. SA is the way to go. Like a poster said earlier, 2hrs if cpan is slow and you are on your feet running. If they pay you per hour of $21, this anti-spam solution, at the get-go, cost them hw + $42. Not too shabby for something as complex, yet, effective as spamassassin (complex in that it does a lot in trying to catch spam.) I only spend about 1/2 hr a day checking logs, and the spam folder (all spam is dropped there) for FP's, nary a FP per half year ends up there. Stay with SA. Get good hw for what they want to spend the money on -- Or a company car ;-D -- Thanks, JamesDR smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
On Thu, May 26, 2005 at 10:30:21AM -0400, Chris Santerre wrote: [...] > >My intention was to have some external opinion - magazine, > >site review, you name it - saying that when summing up > >cost/benefit of SA comparing to other things out there, it is > >best by far (this is my opinion). > > > >Regards. > > Understood, and very good effort by you to educate them. Mostly all the > reviews slam the cost benefit of SA with the "Pay an employee to support > it." line of crap. I actually took the time to do a cost analysis myself, because I got tired of being dragged into Dog & Pony shows from anti-spam vendors who tell upper management they offer solutions "with 0 false positives" (IOW, all spam is quarantined in a folder where users can still get it - certainly not what we mean by FPs) and "we stop spam before it hits your mailserver" (IOW, we sell a service and you point MX records to us, rather than installing our widget on your border). Hope this approach can be useful to others in the same boat. If I had let them spend $250,000 per year for a couple of years and *then* implemented SA and MIMEDefang, I'd get an award for reducing costs. I just avoided the costs, which doesn't excite the bean counters. :) Here is the list of the stats I keep track of in some reporting scripts, monthly: * Inbound email, total * Inbound email flagged as SPAM * Email not flagged * Drops due to virus content * Inbound email discarded (if it gets more than 10 points, we just drop the mail silently) * Amount of times sendmail discovered an SMTP RCPT Flood * Amount of rejected spam, comprised of: - sendmail anti-spam rules, such as domain not existing, relay attempt, etc. - host in the SBL or XBL - other MIMEDefang tests that cause rejections - HELO validity SPF failures, etc. - no such user - pre-greeting traffic (THANK YOU SENDMAIL!) * Number of calls to our Helpdesk reporting an FP, or a problem with a partner trying to send mail due to their SPF or other mail config problems that I see as "spammy" * Amount of time I spend supporting this install, at our business unit chargeback rate (if your bean counters don't use this info, divide admins' salaries by the amount of time to get your rate...) * Hardware cost (we depreciate over 5 years, so I use this to calculate the "cost" of the servers per month) We also have a customized filter using MIMEDefang that takes any MS executable and yanks it out of the email and quarantines it for 24 hours, until we get new Clam and McAfee signatures. We found that we get a lot of valid executables via email (engineering software updates, etc.) so full out rejections wouldn't work. The temp. quarantine is great (the attachment is replaced with a URL that will be valid in 24 hours) and has completely eliminated Email-based worm and virus outbreaks (/me knocks on wood...). We found we were getting the worms/viruses via email through our Asian locations as much as 12 hours before we had DAT udpates. While we were fighting a worm that was spreading so rapidly we took email offline we got a note from McAfee saying "hey you probably won't get infected with this, but there is a new DAT you may want to apply soon that will catch it. Uh, thanks McAfee We made a way for our Helpdesk to manually "publish" a file from the quarantine so its URL is valid if the user confirmed that he knew the sender, he was expecting the file, and that he had contacted the sender and confirmed the file he received was the one actually sent. I only describe this because we track the amount of files actually downloaded after the quarantine as well as the amount of calls (and percentage of executables) that need to be published immediately (mostly due to emergency patches from vendors). This gives us some numbers so we can say "this did not disrupt users significantly or disrupt business". Here are my stats for the monthly report I give to management. They *really* like that I tell them cost per user. Since I know the Total Cost - hardware, time, software fees (none here!) - and I know users, I can break it down the same way as my competition (vendors). Here was some info from my April report: Inbound Mail: 562051 Spam [Flagged]:31228 Ham: 530823 Dropped(>10pts): 113983 Blocked: 1200801 Total non virus SMTP attempts: 2438886 Viruses:3530 SMTP RCPT Floods:772 Quarantined Exe:1414 Downloaded Exe after Quarantine: 101 Early Quarantine releases: 5 FP Reports:3 And the numbers managers like: Percent of Exes actually downloaded: 7.14% Percent of Exes needed immediately: 0.35% Percent of spam BLOCKED instead of accepted:89.21% Percent of mail dropped due to spam: 6.06% Percent of mail blocked: 63.86% Percent Viruses: 0.19% Percent Flagged Spam: 1.66% Percent Ham: 28.23% FP Percent:
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
On 5/26/2005 10:30 AM, Chris Santerre wrote: > Understood, and very good effort by you to educate them. Mostly all the > reviews slam the cost benefit of SA with the "Pay an employee to > support it." line of crap. Every filtering system requires admin time, and if the reviews don't say as much then they're junk. There is a critical difference with SA, however, which is that the admins need to be proficient at stuff like CPAN, Perl, etc., while some of the packaged offerings provide simple click-the-button GUI, and those can have significantly lower salary associations. -- Eric A. Hallhttp://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
I can only speak from the perspective of a small (but growing, thank you) shop. I was committed to using Linux and FOSS from the get, anyway, but as a start-up, commercial solutions to a great many of our needs were out of reach, price-wise. Our email solution was sendmail-spamassassin-rdj-clamav-mailscanner-mailwatch-synonym (last is an email archiver). The results have been an unparalled success, and I'm by no means an expert in any one of the pieces involved. The spamassassin piece has worked flawlessly for us. I second previous posts - SA is cost-effective, easy-to-manage, and well-supported via the list. Dimitri > On 5/26/05 9:15 AM, "Kevin Peuhkurinen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > aecioneto wrote: > >> I post such inquiry to the list because some prospects of mine very > >> often tend to compare feature-by-feature (nonse, IMHO) and - thanks to > >> MS culture - have doubts about a solution with no helpdesk phone at the > >> "other side of the box". > > > > Forgive this little rant, but support for SA is far superior to the > > support most companies offer. For instance, I've got NetIQ's Webtrends > > Log Analyzer installed. I didn't buy a support contract because the > > cost was about $1000 a year and at the time NetIQ had a web based > > knowledge base that seemed useful enough. Recently I've had a minor > > but annoying problem with Webtrends and I've discovered that NetIQ no > > longer makes their web knowledge base available to non-support contract > > holders. So now I have the option of either living with this one > > irritating issue or paying an outrageous sum of money for a contract. > > > > If that's not bad enough, I find most support from proprietary software > > vendors to be the pits. We have Mcafee's Enterprise Anti-Virus suite > > with a support contract. However, I hate calling them because I tend > > to have to wait 30+ minutes on hold just to speak to a first level > > support person who knows less about the product than I do who forces me > > to walk through all the steps I've already done before giving up and > > putting me on hold for another 30+ minutes while they try to track down > > a second level support person. > > > > On the other hand, I had a question about SpamAssassin the other day > > that I couldn't figure out so I posted to this list. Within two hours > > one of the developers had responded. You just can't buy that kind of > > support.
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
And when in doubt go to Linux world. Last year everyone was pushing the antispam solution which was just a fancy SA implementation on their hardware, overpriced and pushed back with the exact same support that you are getting here. I think it's because even their support people are in this room (reading anyways). One of the reps last year explained the benefit of upgrading my SA solution to their canned version for $1k for 10 users, 8k for unlimited (per server). We process email for 100+ domains with an average of 150k emails per day across 4 servers. So in recap I can pay $32k for the same thing that I get now for the cost of 4 Dell 4700 workstations (since we would have to provide those anyways. They also claim an ROI. But I can't see that either. If you are unable to install SA yourself then you're probably better off with a canned solution or hiring a contractor who specializes in the field (which will still run you less than $8k). Most contractors who know SA should be able to have you running in 2 hours, assume they have to build the machine and CPAN is slow that day. Everything else is just ramblings. We'll see what their pushing at Linux world this year... Gary Smith On 5/26/05 9:15 AM, "Kevin Peuhkurinen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > aecioneto wrote: > >> I post such inquiry to the list because some prospects of mine very often >> tend to compare feature-by-feature (nonse, IMHO) and - thanks to MS culture - >> have doubts about a solution with no helpdesk phone at the "other side of the >> box". >> >> >> > Forgive this little rant, but support for SA is far superior to the > support most companies offer. For instance, I've got NetIQ's Webtrends > Log Analyzer installed. I didn't buy a support contract because the > cost was about $1000 a year and at the time NetIQ had a web based > knowledge base that seemed useful enough. Recently I've had a minor > but annoying problem with Webtrends and I've discovered that NetIQ no > longer makes their web knowledge base available to non-support contract > holders. So now I have the option of either living with this one > irritating issue or paying an outrageous sum of money for a contract. > > If that's not bad enough, I find most support from proprietary software > vendors to be the pits. We have Mcafee's Enterprise Anti-Virus suite > with a support contract. However, I hate calling them because I tend > to have to wait 30+ minutes on hold just to speak to a first level > support person who knows less about the product than I do who forces me > to walk through all the steps I've already done before giving up and > putting me on hold for another 30+ minutes while they try to track down > a second level support person. > > On the other hand, I had a question about SpamAssassin the other day > that I couldn't figure out so I posted to this list. Within two hours > one of the developers had responded. You just can't buy that kind of > support. >
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
aecioneto wrote: I post such inquiry to the list because some prospects of mine very often tend to compare feature-by-feature (nonse, IMHO) and - thanks to MS culture - have doubts about a solution with no helpdesk phone at the "other side of the box". Forgive this little rant, but support for SA is far superior to the support most companies offer. For instance, I've got NetIQ's Webtrends Log Analyzer installed. I didn't buy a support contract because the cost was about $1000 a year and at the time NetIQ had a web based knowledge base that seemed useful enough. Recently I've had a minor but annoying problem with Webtrends and I've discovered that NetIQ no longer makes their web knowledge base available to non-support contract holders. So now I have the option of either living with this one irritating issue or paying an outrageous sum of money for a contract. If that's not bad enough, I find most support from proprietary software vendors to be the pits. We have Mcafee's Enterprise Anti-Virus suite with a support contract. However, I hate calling them because I tend to have to wait 30+ minutes on hold just to speak to a first level support person who knows less about the product than I do who forces me to walk through all the steps I've already done before giving up and putting me on hold for another 30+ minutes while they try to track down a second level support person. On the other hand, I had a question about SpamAssassin the other day that I couldn't figure out so I posted to this list. Within two hours one of the developers had responded. You just can't buy that kind of support.
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Aecio F. Neto wrote: Is there any *good* and *trustable* comparison between SA and other commercial solutions? I looked into a few dedicated commercial spam appliances, but most (but not all) of which used a customised version of SpamAssassin as part of their detection process anyway. MessageLabs was outrageously expensive, and we didn't particularly want to have mail going through third-party servers. In the end it was far better to do it myself with SpamAssassin, RDJ, limited RBL and a few other tweaks, and that's how it's been so far. Regards, Martyn -- Martyn Drake http://www.drake.org.uk http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1279160/
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions - OT
On Thursday May 26 2005 10:30 am, Chris Santerre wrote: > >-Original Message- > >From: aecioneto [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 8:36 PM > >To: users > >Subject: Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions > > > > > >Loren and Chris, > >thanks for your replies. > >I am aware of SA, I have been using it from a very long time > >ago - having it well trained and updated - as best as I can. > > > >I understand about all issues you both mentioned about a raw > >SA and other solutions out there. > > > >I post such inquiry to the list because some prospects of mine > >very often tend to compare feature-by-feature (nonse, IMHO) > >and - thanks to MS culture - have doubts about a solution with > >no helpdesk phone at the "other side of the box". > > > >My intention was to have some external opinion - magazine, > >site review, you name it - saying that when summing up > >cost/benefit of SA comparing to other things out there, it is > >best by far (this is my opinion). > > > >Regards. > > Understood, and very good effort by you to educate them. Mostly all the > reviews slam the cost benefit of SA with the "Pay an employee to support > it." line of crap. > > With RDJ and URIBL setup, there isn't much to have to mess with at all. > Once setup, it just works. I'm also stuck in the MS culture. You simply > need to tell them, "Look, it cost snothing but my time. Let me install it, > and try it. You don't have much to lose. It can't hurt to try it before > spending money." > > Filter one bosses email, but not another. See which one votes for SA ;) > > If I can admin my SA box, in the incredible short amount of time I have, > then even a drunken monkey with A.D.D. could do it. > > --Chris (Freakin last episode of "LOST" told us nothing) But it was enough to bring you back next season! :-)
RE: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
>-Original Message- >From: aecioneto [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 8:36 PM >To: users >Subject: Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions > > >Loren and Chris, >thanks for your replies. >I am aware of SA, I have been using it from a very long time >ago - having it well trained and updated - as best as I can. > >I understand about all issues you both mentioned about a raw >SA and other solutions out there. > >I post such inquiry to the list because some prospects of mine >very often tend to compare feature-by-feature (nonse, IMHO) >and - thanks to MS culture - have doubts about a solution with >no helpdesk phone at the "other side of the box". > >My intention was to have some external opinion - magazine, >site review, you name it - saying that when summing up >cost/benefit of SA comparing to other things out there, it is >best by far (this is my opinion). > >Regards. Understood, and very good effort by you to educate them. Mostly all the reviews slam the cost benefit of SA with the "Pay an employee to support it." line of crap. With RDJ and URIBL setup, there isn't much to have to mess with at all. Once setup, it just works. I'm also stuck in the MS culture. You simply need to tell them, "Look, it cost snothing but my time. Let me install it, and try it. You don't have much to lose. It can't hurt to try it before spending money." Filter one bosses email, but not another. See which one votes for SA ;) If I can admin my SA box, in the incredible short amount of time I have, then even a drunken monkey with A.D.D. could do it. --Chris (Freakin last episode of "LOST" told us nothing)
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
Loren and Chris, thanks for your replies. I am aware of SA, I have been using it from a very long time ago - having it well trained and updated - as best as I can. I understand about all issues you both mentioned about a raw SA and other solutions out there. I post such inquiry to the list because some prospects of mine very often tend to compare feature-by-feature (nonse, IMHO) and - thanks to MS culture - have doubts about a solution with no helpdesk phone at the "other side of the box". My intention was to have some external opinion - magazine, site review, you name it - saying that when summing up cost/benefit of SA comparing to other things out there, it is best by far (this is my opinion). Regards. __ UOL Fone: Fale com o Brasil e o Mundo com até 90% de economia. http://www.uol.com.br/fone
Re: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
> Is there any *good* and *trustable* comparison between SA and other > commercial solutions? It depends on what kind of comparison you are interested in. Every few months some magazine or online info service will run a comparison of various spam tools, and the report of their report ends up generating a considerable amount of traffic here. ;-) It should be noted that many commercial spam devices actually use some version or other of SA as the main engine; possibly with local patches from the spam tool supplier. Thus it should be expected that the commercial tool and SA will be reasonably equivalent in ability to prune spam from the mail. The main difference in the commercial solutions, as best I can tell, is ease of installation and use compared to SA. Basically, you are paying someone to package SA (or some other spam engine) along with a usually complete mail solution, and also usually a rule updating service. So the commercial solution becomes somewhat of a "no brainer" to install and administer, since it is a packaged solution, and most of the administration is actually done by the company you bought it from. On the other hand, SA in the raw can be a little challenging for someone new to mail processing. There are hundreds or possibly thousands of assembling a mail processing chain, and everyone has their favorite method. There is no "one standard vendor-supplied way" as there is in the PC world. This means that every new mail admin has to a) find out what the possible solution are (no mean feat in itself), b) decide which one(s) are likely to be best in his case, c) find all of the necessary parts for the solution, d) install all of the parts, with their various requirements, e) get it all working together, and f) keep it all working on each minor upgrade of any part. This isn't trivial if being a mail admin is supposed to be a very minor part of your main job description. So the overall comparison boils down to: SA is free in terms of download cost, but not free in terms of admin hours spent installing, monitoring for upgrades, and similar (although RDJ has greatly helped in allowing somewhat automatic rule updates). The other tools can cost a lot, but generally require very little administration time, and generally you don't have a lot of options in their setup. Both are usually pretty good at catching spam. Loren
RE: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions
>-Original Message- >From: Aecio F. Neto [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2005 2:22 PM >To: users@spamassassin.apache.org >Subject: Comparison of SA and commercial solutions > > >Hi, there. >Is there any *good* and *trustable* comparison between SA and other >commercial solutions? >Any feedback much appreciated. > >Regards Being as fair as I can be..the answer is NO. Definetly NO! Whenever there is a comparison between SA and commercial package, they will use a standard SA install. Nothing tweaked. No SARE rules. No extra URIBL lists added. Most likely 4-8 months old, no bayes DB, ect. (sometimes even older versions, that spammers have worked completely around.) Then they will compare it to a commercial package that has some sort of auto-update feature that is updated to the day they install it. All sorts of extras added. And usually the engine is SA running in the background! I've emailed people who have done the comparisons, and their responses have been pretty standard. They don't have the time to become experts in SA, and have no time to install past the initial setup. I have yet to see anything indepth either. Mostly the systems are run in parallel with each other and they look at spam caught rates. But never look into speed, resources, ect. They cover capture rates, ease of setup, and they ALWAYS, all of them, every single one, say that there is a lack of a support for SA. Which, IMHO is complete BS. You just don't have a phone number to call. But there is plenty of support. So again, I have seen no single fair comparison between any comercial product and SA. HTH, Chris Santerre System Admin and SARE/URIBL Ninja http://www.rulesemporium.com http://www.uribl.com
