Summary: Advice on spam strategy (spam proxy?)

Thanks to Joe Radinger, Michael Grice, Steve Cooper, Jeffrey Taylor,
Mike Kercher and  Derrick Shoemake  for their replies.

My questions were:
> What are the advantages / disadvantages of a "black box" approach?

I quote from one of the emails:

"The advantage of an appliance-type product is that it should do what
you're thinking of doing. It should be easier to manage, since the vendor
is updating the software. It's also independent of your mail server,
so you can change mail servers, etc., without having to change your
anti-spam setup.

The disadvantage is that it costs more money, and you have no guarantee
that the vendor will update it in a timely manner."

Someone suggested increasing the number of mailservers/spamscanning
machines if the load is the only problem.

> 
> If you replace the "black box" by a spam proxy machine, how are you
> going to to handle the spamfiltering without making that machine a
> mailserver also?

It relay the mail to the "real" mail servers after filtering out some
spam.

> 
> If this machine have to run a MTA like exim, I suspect it the MX
> records for our domain must refer to it an not any longer to our
> present mail servers.  Correct?
> 
>  
One person mentioned that they have tested similar setups:

"The appliance was set up with an MX record of 10, and the
real mail server with an MX record of 20. Mail went to the appliance,
which scanned it, etc., and then forwarded it to the real mail
server."

A few emails refer to the use of RBL's in the MTA which helped a lot
to diminish the spamcount on their machines.

Regards
Johann


-- 
Johann Spies          Telefoon: 021-808 4036
Informasietegnologie, Universiteit van Stellenbosch

     "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not."    
                            Proverbs 1:10 
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