When you sign up for AnteSpam, you give us some information about your email server. When you are ready to transition to using AnteSpam, you just need to modify your domain's DNS (Domain Name System) to send your email to us. After we are receiving your domain's email, we will process it with our fault-tolerant, reliable system and send the valid email on to your server.
Email Processing
When someone sends an email to your domain, it is sent to the bank of AnteSpam servers first. When we receive the email, we do the following:
- The email is checked for viruses (if you have virus protection enabled for your domain). If a virus is detected, the email is deleted completely.
- The email is checked against your block and pass lists. If it matches an entry in those lists, it is sent on or sidelined, as appropriate.
- If the email is not in your block or pass lists, it is handed off to the spam detection engine, Spamassassin™. Spamassassin evaluates the email with hundreds of tests and gives it a "score."
- If the score is below the threshold selected by the domain (or the address, in the case of Advanced AnteSpam users), the email is sent on to your email server. Your email server will only have to handle a fraction of its current load.
- If the score is at or above your sideline threshold, the email is sent to the sideline server for your domain. Sidelined email stays on our server for a short time, and is able to be reviewed during that time, but will eventually be deleted to make room for more.
Reliability
The AnteSpam team has put a lot of time and effort into developing a fault-tolerant and reliable system to receive, process, and deliver or sideline email. Our servers are located in a secure data center, connected to the Internet through multiple backbones. In addition, instead of one server that can and will be down at times, we use numerous servers running in parallel. If one server goes down, our other servers carry the additional processing load so that your email will not stop.
We store sidelined email on multiple servers, also, although not in parallel. The sideline email servers do, however, use RAID arrays for disk storage - if a single hard drive fails, the sidelined email is still safe and accessible. If a sideline email server is temporarily out of service, the sidelined email stored on it might be unavailable for a short period, but it will not be lost. If we ever have to permanently remove a sideline email server from service, we will first transfer all the sidelined mail to another server.
Service Interruptions
When AnteSpam cannot reach your email server to forward a valid email, AnteSpam Emergency Queuing stores the email in a "retry" queue. For up to 5 days, AnteSpam will attempt to deliver the email at ever longer intervals. The intervals will vary from 1000 seconds (16.67 minutes) shortly after an email enters the queue, up to 4000 seconds (66.67 minutes) at the end of 5 days. This feature will keep your email from being lost, in the case of long power outages or issues with your email server that last several days. If your email server is still unreachable after 5 days, the email is automatically deleted from the retry queue. With at least 24 hours' notice to support@antespam.com, this time limit can be temporarily extended for unusual circumstances.