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In the last month we've seen the amount of spam double! In the last year spam has been increasing at an incredible rate but we've never seen it double in just a single 30 day period, but that is exactly what has happened in the last month here. We have two mail relay servers that simply act as a first line of defense, they are used to run the mail through RBL's and some fairly stringent spamflt0 files. Since we used two relays (equal mx values to split the mail up) we thought we wouldn't need any high powered servers so one is an old 1 gig cpu with 768megs and the other is a 1.8gig cpu with 768 megs. The 1gig machine has no other function than to act as a mail relay, but in the last month it began to falter under the load and it was building up huge numbers of files in the holding spool because it couldn't keep up with the load. We are building a new more powerful machine in order to handle the spam load. Our Modus server does fine because it is on the receiving end of those two servers and by the time the mail is cleaned out it only has to handle a relatively small amount of email. I noticed this morning that the Congress is about to spam a bill to allow prosecution of spammers. I suppose something is better than nothing but I wonder just how much good this will do. The biggest problem I see is the fact that for smaller companies like us, the cost of prosecuting spammers under this new legislation would be prohibitive if not impossible. I think what we need is an organization of independent ISP's, with yearly dues and memberships with one of the major reasons for the existence of this organization being for peers to get together for the purpose of sharing technology information, business information etc. I see one of the major benefits being the idea of sharing information on dealing with spam, perhaps forming our own RBL, *nix alternatives for mail relay servers before email is sent on to a main mail server and whatever suits the mood and need of independent ISP's like most myself and probably a majority of others in this list. AOHELL, MSN, Earthlink and the rest don't need or want us around. Some companies like SBC are actively working to put the independent ISP out of business. We used to have AOP (Association of Online Professionals) but they moved to cater to the big names/big vendors and left us behind. We need an organization that represents us, and the best people to represent us is US. Our own group, our own organization catering to our needs and working for us. Just some thoughts off the top of my head but does anyone find any merit in this at all? The sheer volume of spam that we get already costs us a fair amount of money to fight it and to have machinery capable of dealing with it and still get valid email through to our users. I believe that in the long run the reduction of spam would pay for the cost of any such membership and it would have a lot of valuable uses, not just for the spam issues. A place for independent ISP's to gather and discuss and share information of value to all of us, from the technical to business issues. Any interest in this at all? If so, there is a such a group now forming. A number of us have been meeting every six months for the last 4 1/2 years doing just this. Its been a small group but we would like to enlarge it to bring in as many people as possible, more people participating means more information sharing. Our new group we are calling Peercon. Our website has gone up just within the last day or two but is still information and graphics challenged as it will probably be another week before we get it populated and ready for public viewing. Just yesterday I received a call from Steven Foster (also on this list) asking me about spam issues. I told him that we were near saturation level with our relay servers due to the volume of spam. He is having the same problem and we talked about some of the innovative things he is doing about it. I'm hoping that Steven can be talked into attending our next Peercon event to lead a discussion on fighting spam using various techniques and that he'll bring along his linux expertise with him to help some of us who are *nix challenged. MikeH ---- 'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds. Mike Herrera Access One Online Services http://www.access-one.com Peercon - Information Sharing for Independent ISP's and Content Providers http://www.peercon.org ** To leave this list, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put the word "LEAVE" in the BODY of the email.
