Re: [exim] dnsbls

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Author: Ian Eiloart
Date:  
To: Martin A. Brooks, Odhiambo Washington
CC: exim users
Subject: Re: [exim] dnsbls


--On 13 March 2008 22:42:23 +0000 "Martin A. Brooks"
<martin@???> wrote:

> Odhiambo Washington wrote:
>> That is a big possibility, but how do I control my server from "using it
>> too much"?
>> Especially when you have several servers, for example.
>
> You don't.
>
> You determine whether your use of their free blocklist falls within their
> terms of service and pay for their commercial service if you don't.
>
> http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/answers.lasso?section=DNSBL%20Usage#220



Use of the Spamhaus DNSBLs via DNS queries to our public DNSBL servers is
free of charge if you meet all three of the following criteria:
a) Your use of the Spamhaus DNSBLs is non-commercial*, and
b) Your email traffic is less than 80,000 SMTP connections per day, and
c) Your DNSBL query volume is less than 320,000 queries per day.

It seems that (b) is unreasonable, given that we can't control the number
of connections per day, and 95% of them are spam. It would be more
reasonable if (b) were measuring the number of emails that we accept for
delivery per day.

(a) and (c) are quite reasonable conditions, both of which spamhaus can
verify.

(c) ought to be controllable by managing caching, whatever the number of
SMTP connections.

I'm puzzled by the fact that the threshold in (c) is much higher than in
(b). I'd also be interested to know whether the limits are averages over a
month, or whatever.

--
Ian Eiloart
IT Services, University of Sussex
x3148