Dean Drako wrote:
>We make no claims about it being better
>or worse than any other RBL.
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.
So, depending on your definition of "better," you could either say "BRBL is better" or "BRBL is worse." It would generally depend on your sensitivity to FPs.
jms
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