Spamhaus and Barracuda Networks BRBL

Fri Feb 19 02:38:26 UTC 2010

Hello Joel.

 > 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.

Your numbers reflect what I see, too.  One other thing to note is that the two
services don't catch exactly the same spam, so using both results in better
trapping than either one alone.

John

    John Souvestre - New Orleans LA