SURBL Rsync Access Request

For systems processing large numbers of inbound messages, specifically more than 250,000 per day, we recommend setting up a local caching name server for mirroring SURBL and other list zone files. Doing so offers multiple advantages:

Significantly improve the performance of your mail servers
Reduce your network traffic
Help reduce public DNS server traffic

The server need not be dedicated; certainly any existing local name server you may have could slave the zone files easily. However, many administrators run a local list name server cache directly on their mail server(s) or on a separate low-end server for maximum performance.

We strongly recommend using the very fast rbldnsd name server for caching lists, with rysnc used to get the zone files, as described on our FAQ, Links and News sections. Note that there is a Windows port of rbldnsd. You can also use rsync to grab the BIND versions of the zone files if you must run BIND, which is significantly slower than rbldnsd in this application. In case it's useful, we have added some documents about setting up local caching of list zone files:

Bob Cottrell describes setting up rbldnsd and rsync on top of an existing BIND server.
Here are Jeff Chan's notes on setting up rbldnsd with BIND under FreeBSD.
Michele Neylon's DNS Blacklists - Setting up a local mirror also explains how to set up rbldnsd and rsync with BIND under Unix/BSD/Linux.
NJABL has some helpful tips on setting up rbldnsd and rsync to serve list zone files locally.
Rick Macdougall writes up how he set up rbldnsd to run on the same name server as dnscache from djbdns.
I've written up how to use rsync with BIND to cache list zone files.

If you are using rbldnsd, please use the type dnset for the SURBL subdomain zone files such as multi.surbl.org.rbldnsd. Don't use types generic or ip4set as shown in the NJABL examples.

Please use the form below to request rsync access to SURBL zone files:

Notes:

Traditionally rsync is used for systems processing more than 100,000 to 250,000 inbound messages per day. Lower-volume mail servers generally should use the public name servers.
Your daily message volume estimated above is not the same as your number of mail accounts. The daily message volume will be many times larger than the number of mail accounts.
Please include only one IP address. If you have multiple servers needing to use list zone files, then rsync to that single address, and use it as a master rsync server to locally distribute files to the other servers in your network. That is a standard practice since it minimizes the load on the rsync servers. Here's a sample rsyncd server configuration file that you can use to serve the files in your local network.
Please rsync at the minutes indicated in the reply later, generally every 15 minutes. Ideally start rsyncing some seconds after the minute using sleep or cron jitter.
Most systems should rsync and use only the multi.surbl.org.rbldnsd file. The multi.surbl.org zone includes all the SUBRL lists, and it should be the only one needed. Querying multi means that the results for all lists are answered with only one DNS query. rbldnsd zones are much smaller in memory than BIND, and rbldnsd is vastly more CPU efficient also. The difference are 5 to 10 times.
Information will be used to evaluate your rsync access request. The only information that may be published is your Organization name if you approve it above. (As a practical matter, we're no longer updating the published list of organizations using SURBLs.)
Please sign up for the zones and announce SURBL mailing lists in order to keep up to date with any important changes to the zone files and to get updates about the SURBL project. Message volume on these lists is very low.
Please contact any other lists you may be using to request rsync access to their zone files. Use rsync and your local caching name server to serve those locally also. Many other lists offer rbldnsd versions of their zone files.