SMTP rate-limits [Was: Re: ingress SMTP]

Sun Sep 7 01:02:13 UTC 2008

Can anyone comment authoritatively on the percentage of spam that's from a
leaky faucet compared to fire hose?  The stuff I see in my customer base are
all fire hoses at the rate of 2.5, sometimes 5 message connection attempts
per second. (I bet an academic could study the rate of spam emissions from a
certain IP to identify their upstream bandwidth).

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Thomas [mailto:mike at mtcc.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 9:46 AM
To: Paul Ferguson
Cc: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: SMTP rate-limits [Was: Re: ingress SMTP]

<snip> 

I thought that these bot nets were so massive that it is pretty
easy for them to fly under the radar for quotas, rate limiting, etc.
Not that all bot nets are created equal, and there aren't local hot
spots for whatever reason, but putting on the brakes in a way that
users wouldn't feel pain is simply not going to make any appreciable
difference in the overall mal-rate.

No?

       Mike