[Pymilter] pymilter vs MIMEDefang / pymilter performances

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, stephane Lentz wrote:

> I don't remember if I already asked you but did you do a
> kind of benchmark for Pymilter vs Mimedefang in a similar
> configuration set-up ?

No direct comparison.  I'm not out to kill the competition.  I would say
if you prefer Perl scripting, use MIMEDefang.  If Perl code looks like 
chicken scratches to you, and you love Python, then use pymilter.

> For the time being it seems that MIMEDefang has more press and has more
> features and history but for basic setups (filtering of subject and/or
> banned_exts use) how do pymilter will perform on the memory usage/CPU &
> so on points of view ? What about 50.000, 100.000 messages a day set-ups ?

As a datapoint, my mail server does 30.000 message per day on a 600Mhz
Celeron.  It runs dspam as well as SPF and various python policies.
It is never less than 96% idle according to sar.  However, all but
a few hundred of those 30.000 messages are spam which is blocked before ever
getting to SMTP DATA.  So I can't say what the load would be for 30.000
legitimate messages.

One of the pymilter users is an ISP that runs 100.000 plus messages
a day using their own milter.  So the overhead to get to your python
coded milter callback is not much.

> I read some notes such as "Check valid domains allowed by internal senders
> to detect PCs infected with spam trojans." but could not understand the
> idea. Could you clarify the content ?

Here is a sample log line:

2005Jun22 12:01:04 [12430] REJECT: zombie PC at  192.168.100.171  sending MAIL FROM  debby at fedex.com

No, fedex.com does not use pymilter, and there is no one named debby at my
client. :-)  But the idiot using the PC at 192.168.100.171 has downloaded and
installed some stupid weatherbar/hotbar/ aquariumscreensaver that is actually a
spam bot.

> Now that the source is on SF, maybe more people could contribute to it ?

We now have another developer working on SPF.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
a Microsoft sponsored "Where do you want to go from here?" commercial.