Re: [Exim] Exiscan vs. MailScanner

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Author: Tony Finch
Date:  
To: moliveri
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] Exiscan vs. MailScanner
Mike Oliveri <moliveri@???> wrote:
>
>Has anybody had any direct experience comparing MailScanner with
>Exiscan? I only just heard of Exiscan and it looks like it will do
>everything I need. Any pros or cons? Any benefits either way
>performance-wise?


The big advantage of Exiscan is that it can reject messages at SMTP time
before you have accepted responsibility for them, which means you don't
have to deal with bouncing messages and thereby becoming a collateral
spammer. We use MailScanner, so we have worked around the bounce problem
by not bouncing suspect email (or doing sender virus notifications) and
instead we rely on the recipient of a filtered message to distinguish
between legitimate and illegitimate email and deal with it appropriately.

The big advantage of MailScanner is that it gives you much greater control
over the load on your machines. You configure it according to the maximum
processing capacity of your computer and it will not exceed that; in fact
because it deals with messages in batches the cost of processing a message
actually goes down slightly as the load increases, because the per-batch
costs are shared by more messages. With Exiscan you have to rely on Exim's
load protection mechanisms, which basically means that you have to stop
accepting messages when your machine gets too loaded -- this is bad if the
machine happens to be an SMTP smarthost. You therefore need more overcapacity
with Exiscan than with MailScanner.

Tony.
--
f.a.n.finch <dot@???> http://dotat.at/
ARDNAMURCHAN POINT TO CAPE WRATH INCLUDING THE OUTER HEBRIDES: NORTHEAST 2 OR
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