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ASMTP Challenge

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We believe ASMTP is the best spam filtering system available, considering its accuracy, local management, ease of use, flexibility, and price.

So if you've looked at ASMTP and decided to buy another enterprise spam filter, we ask that you take the ASMTP Challenge and compare the other product with ASMTP. Here's how.

Note: We will also like to hear from journalists and reviewers who would like to run the test and write about the results.

Load-Sharing Comparison

You can compare ASMTP with another enterprise spam filter by connecting them in parallel in a load-sharing arrangement.

  1. Get approval from your bidders to test their respective products. ESCOM offers every potential customer a 30-day ASMTP evaluation, with installation and full operational support. Get an equivalent commitment from your other vendor(s). If the other vendor(s) offers you an appliance solution, ESCOM will also provide an appliance.

  2. Configure your network for MX load balancing.

    If you have a load balancing TCP switch, then you can configure the switch as your MX host and have it give essentially the same number of connections to each spam filter.

    If you don't have a TCP switch, then you can set up MX records with the same preference for each spam filter. For example, if your domain is abcd.edu, then you might define two MX hosts as follows:

    MX 100 asmtp.abcd.edu.
    MX 100 brandx.abcd.edu.

  3. Configure both appliances to forward filtered mail to your mail server, e.g., mta.abcd.edu. The network will look something like the following figure: (to be replaced with a jpg):

    Internet ---------> asmtp.abcd.edu -----------> mta.abcd.edu
    Internet ---------> brandx.abcd.edu ----------> mta.abcd.edu

  4. If both appliances are online and filtering mail for the duration of your test, then each appliance should get essentially half the load. If one appliance blocks a remote host, then the remote host will probably retry with the other appliance.

  5. If possible, have your users report spam received during the test. Be sure to get complete headers so that you can determine if a spam was received by asmtp or by brandx.

  6. At the end of the test calculate the results for each appliance.

Serial Filtering Comparison

You can compare ASMTP with MTA-based filtering, or with client-based (e.g., Bayesian) filtering by configuring all incoming mail to flow in series through ASMTP and then the other filter.

  1. Get approval from your bidders (as described above) to test their respective products.

  2. Configure ASMTP as the MX host for your network.

  3. Configure ASMTP to forward mail to your MTA, as shown below. You may insert another enterprise filter between ASMTP and the MTA if you desire, but ASMTP must always be the first proxy device.

    Internet --> asmtp.abcd.edu --> mta.abcd.edu --+-- client 1
                                                   +-- client 2
                                                   ...
                                                   +-- client n

  4. Monitor the amount of spam collected by ASMTP and also collected/rejected by your MTA spam filtering system or by individual clients.

  5. If possible, have your users report spam received during the test. Be sure to get complete headers so that you can determine if a spam was received by asmtp or by brandx.