Spamhaus and Barracuda Networks BRBL

Fri Feb 19 01:50:39 UTC 2010

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

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Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719
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