Items to Consider when deploying the Symantec Messaging Gateway (SMG) and Symantec Traffic Shaper (STS) together

Products

• Messaging Gateway

Issue/Introduction

You would like to know items to consider when deploying both a Symantec Traffic Shaper with one or more Symantec Brightmail Gateway appliances.

Resolution

The Symantec Traffic Shaper and the Symantec Messaging Gateway appliances have been engineered to address various aspects of the issue of spam messages. Both products may be deployed together as part of the same antispam solution.

Suitable environments

The Symantec Traffic Shaper is most effective in environments where a large amount of email is received.  Its filtering capabilities allow it to greatly reduce the overall spam volume and increase the available bandwidth for legitimate email. When combined with the Symantec Messaging Gateway filtering technology, the impact of spam should be minimal. To best benefit from this combination, proper assessment of the target environment should be done. regarding message volume, type of traffic, network topology and expectations.

As a guideline, these are possible situations when adding an STS might be considered:

• When more than 30 messages per second are expected. 
• When a bandwidth increase is required in order to handle the increase in spam / email volume.
• When performance of the current anti-spam solution or MTAs is an issue.

Technical aspects and requirements

Location:

• A single STS host can be set to either filter inbound or outbound traffic, not both.
• The STS should be placed upstream from the Symantec Messaging Gateway when filtering inbound email traffic.
• The STS should be placed downstream from the Symantec Messaging Gateway when filtering of outbound email traffic is desired.
• All inbound mail and the return traffic must flow through the appliance when 2 active nodes are deployed in routed mode.

Configuration details:

• Connection Classification should be disabled on the SMG appliance.
• Symantec Global Bad Senders should be set to reject on the SMG appliance.
• The IP address of the Symantec Traffic Shaper does not need to be added as an Internal Mail Host on the SMG Appliance.

References

Key benefits and features of Symantec Brightmail products and Symantec Premium AntiSpam


The Symantec Traffic Shaper Appliance: A Technical White Paper on Antispam Defenses at the TCP/IP Level