Anti Spam Appliances

Spam is becoming a big problem for internet users and not only is it annoying, but it can also create problems such as slow downs, using up free space and important mails can get lost between all the junk ones. Of course there are ways to defend your mailbox from tons of unwanted emails and for this purpose there are anti spam appliances. These hardware devices were designed and created to keep spam mails from ever even reaching the inbox of your email account.

Anti spam appliances are hardware equipment which has been specially created to block spam emails and instant messages. The appliances are connected at the gateway of the system or the email server and have to be used in connection with installed software. The anti spam appliances come pre-configured and are mostly used for large networks that have many computers connected, such as those found in big companies or universities. Although there is also anti spam software, there are still many who prefer to just purchase something that comes ready to use and this means for them easy to use and time saving. There are also some companies that produce special anti spam filters for smaller or private networks.

An anti spam appliance has another advantage over software. Many software programs only work with the Windows operating system, whereas the hardware will also work with others such as Linux. Some companies may require that Linux be used in their computer systems and a ready to use hardware device solves the problem of not finding suitable anti spam software for this operating system. Some also just prefer an independent working appliance over more software that has to be manually configured before it will even do what it is expected to. This configuring is for some, especially beginners, quite confusing and if not done correctly will not prevent any spam messages or mails from flooding your inbox and will not provide any protection.

A good anti spam appliance should have certain features. An appliance firewall must have the capacity to handle large amounts of emails, and for companies this should be by more than ten million mails each day. Anti spam hardware should also not slow down the email servers or computers and very important is that it filters out viruses sent through emails also. Since spam mails and viruses are getting better and more effective by the day, it is also necessary that the appliance receives regular updates in order to be able to do its job. A high quality appliance will actually recognize on its own when updates are available and it will download the information and update itself automatically. This makes using such an anti spam hardware piece even easier and it requires no maintenance.

There are many good reasons why anti spam appliances are useful and for some preferred over anti spam softwares. These appliances are extremely easy to use and do not even have to be configurated, although an advanced user may do so if they like. Unlike software, and anti spam appliance does not need a lot of hard drive space, updates itself and generally does not slow down the computer or email server.