Wednesday, April 25, 2007

I Pay Full Price for Perscription Meds

I Pay Full Price for Perscription Meds
Thanks to Exchange Defender
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I've been using email since 1983. Back then, you needed to execute a series of elaborate commands to get from one university system to another. It could take half an hour to make a connection and transfer a 10k text file.

But email was automated. Even before TCP/IP was in common usage, the email systems "just worked." Magic procedures connected one system to another, and email flowed smoothly from university to university.

As a result, email built the internet. Email was, from the very beginning, the "killer app" of the internet. People signed up for compuserve in order to communicate with one another. Other forms of data exchange followed, of course. But the backbone of _why_ people got connected to the internet was email.

But, in return, email is trying to kill the internet.

Unfiltered email has become almost completely unusable. And the completely arrogant moron vigilantes who create "block lists" make the situation worse.

"I'm not sorry." They say. "All your email has been blocked because . . . you're using a new technology instead of a dusty T-1. Fiber? That's some new fad. Your entire class C subnet has been marked as _dial-up_ and denied email. If you wish to be removed from this list, fix your stuff."

So in addition to spammers and viruses and spyware, we have these block list a-holes cutting off large sections of the internet from one another.

Then you have a bunch of poor imbeciles who think they know what they're doing, so they get put in charge of email. But after the setup wizard finsihes, they don't have a clue. They build open relays and make the situation worse for everyone.

Now these poor fools have their pants down around their ankles, so they listen to a radio ad and buy a $5,000 spam filter that's more complicated than a Boeing 757. Of course they can't configure it properly, and they either continue to have an open relay or cut off half of their own clients from sending and receiving their email.

And thus internet email comes to a grinding halt.

Now, enter a truly good, competent consultant. Every piece of equipment you control is properly configured. DNS and every other service is properly configured. Exchange, sendmail, and spam filters are all perfect.

But you still have to constantly deal with email problems. And so you spend a huge amount of time trying to explain to your clients that the email problems are not on your systems.

But the fools with their pants down are also telling their bosses that the problem is not theirs.

What can you do (other than cry)?

We've decided that there's something we can do.

We sign people up for Exchange Defender.

Here's how that helps. Because E.D. servers are on the right kind of circuits, and are all well-known, registered email servers, there are never any problems getting email in or out of it. Your own ISP no longer cuts off your email. Client systems and arbitrary block lists don't block your email.

Incompetent people still get lots of spam. But their systems do't block your email because your email goes through E.D. If their systems are listed as spammers, you can still whitelist them. They have all the headaches, but you can get email to flow.

You also get a minor bonus: you get to pay full price for Presc1pt1on Druu gs like ci@las. While you get the opportunity to let these things in, you don't have to.

And a major bonus: You get dramatically lower network traffic. After all, 95%-99% of your email traffic is spam. Once you set your firewall so it only lets email traffic come from Exchange Defender servers, your traffic will drop dramatically.

Does Exchange Defender solve all your problems? No. You still have to balance your own checkbook. But it sure makes email management and troubleshooting a lot easier.

Give it a try. I'm sure Vlad will give you a test drive if you badger him enough. Check it out at www.exchangedefender.com.

2 comments:

  1. Given the proliferation of c1aL1$ and V1@gra junk mail, do you think Vlad had ED in mind when he named the product? :-))

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's not for me to say. But it is an unfortunate acronym.

    ReplyDelete

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