[ale] OT: gmail question

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Wed, 2011-02-23 at 09:42 -0500, David Tomaschik wrote:
> IMO, running a mail server reliably and with GMail-like quality of
> spam filtering is actually a difficult task.  Having a single MX seems
> to be asking for failure to me.  Although I suppose I could invest in
> something like http://www.dyndns.com/services/sendlabs/backupmx.html.
> I'd still need to find the quality spam filtering, though. 

Both valid points.

I have found Linode to be a highly reliable service, though, so the
point on reliability is diminished.  I would not advocate running such a
setup on a home network, however.

There can be problems in environments where not all systems are aware of
the use user database, as well; for example, it's difficult to support
the notion of immediate rejection of mails destined for invalid user
accounts if not all of the secondary MX servers have the ability to look
to see if a user is valid or not.  In that case, you can have problems
with bounces back to invalid source addresses, which is of course an
issue.

I have found the amount of spam (using SpamAssassin) to be acceptable
when the system is trained on a regular basis.

Probably the most major problem, though, is that of the way we do
Internet mail itself.  I do not see a solution for that, however; the
problem really with the present Internet mail system is that while there
is the ability to do things like be very strict about what you can
accept and so forth, there is no universal method available that doesn't
also waste bandwidth.

Honestly, I would like to see some major changes to the whole Internet
mail system.  I could probably write a book on everything that is wrong
with the weaknesses of the way we are doing things at present, but I'm
afraid it would not accomplish anything but waste my own time.  I think
that even if there were better, stronger standards that worked more
efficiently, even with other significant benefits, it would never be
deployed.  The current system works "well enough" in the view of most
people.  That means that there would never be a critical mass of people
willing to change it that it'd ever actually change.

	--- Mike
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