I have been trying to figure this out myself, but I have seem to only confused myself more. I need a little help on what I should do for filtering out spam before it hits my email server. I will explain my environment a little so you can have a picture of what I am trying to accomplish.

I am trying to set this up in a corporate environment that is running Microsoft Exchange server 2000 enterprise. I am trying to use this as an opportunity to introduce Linux into our enterprise. What I would like to see is a Linux server running some kind of spam filtering software that would receive the mail first after checking them pass them on to our exchange server.

I have looked at spam-assassin and checked out the web site, but I think that I am more confused now then before I started. what I don't understand is that it seems that I also need a mail server running on the linux box in order to use spam-assassin. Again I think that I am more confused now then before I started. I thought that it would work similar to our virus gateway where it checks the email as they come in and hands it off to exchange in a matter of seconds.

I think that my environment would have to look something like this. Email comes into our virus gateway then gets handed off to the Spam filter and then finally ending up at the Exchange server.

Thanks for any help that you can provide!



loom001