RE: Spamhaus and Barracuda Networks BRBL

["John Souvestre" <johns () sstar com>]

Hello Joel.

> I have some objective data based on our testing here.  Over the past 18
> months, Barracuda's block rate is 81.9%, while Spamhaus' is 83.3%.  For
> whatever measurement error you want to include, that says that they are
> roughly equivalent.  Over the past 6 months, BRBL is actually getting
> better: their block rate is 87%, while Spamhaus is 82%.
>
> There is, of course, a catch.  BRBL gets a higher rate, but at a
> substantially higher false positive (FP) rate.  We normalize FPs per
> 10,000 messages our measurements.  Over the last 18 months, BRBL was 4.1
> FP/10K messages; Spamhaus 0.2 FP/10K messages.  Again, BRBL is getting
> better: over the past 6 months, BRBL went down to 1.6 FP/10K messages,
> while Spamhaus is about the same at 0.3 FP/10K messages.

Your numbers reflect what I see, too.  One other thing to note is that the two
services don't catch exactly the same spam, so using both results in better
trapping than either one alone.

John

    John Souvestre - New Orleans LA