It could be DNS server related, do you have primary and secondary servers configured in SM?

Are all servers configured in the OS accessible and working correctly. Also note that SM takes a copy of the OS DNS configuration at service start so any changes made require a restart of the service. If a DNS server fails SM continues to try that server and this can add 1/2 hour to spool delivery and gives lots of false positives/negatives to Spam scores.

It's on the list of things to improve.

We use Google DNS. The multi RBLs have always been slow for us.

We disabled them a year ago.

Ron

Thanks for the reply, I thought it might have something to do with the dns so I changed the primary to 8.8.8.8 and the secondary to 1.1.1.1 but never restarted the smartermail service.  I restarted the smartermail service and that fixed my spam check delay.  Looks like everthing is working much better after the restart.

Thanks

It's not best practice to use public DNS servers, the block list servers can see lookups as denial of service attempts and this will reduce your overall Spam detection accuracy. See the notes on DNS here.

It's also not best practice to disable the RBLs, bad actors can use your domain as a hop to attack others. You might be relaxed about compromise but once they are in your network and can use your outbound authenticated mail service it makes Spam harder to detect for the rest of us and makes everyone's life so much harder.

Jeff - What are your average response times for your URIBLs now?  I have re-enabled ours and all are working well again except one.

Steve - Thank you for the feedback.  We have updated SmarterMail to use internal DNS servers.

in.dnsbl.org is the only one very very slow for us at this time.  170760 milliseconds (170 seconds).

Thanks,

Ron

Hi Ron,

What settings do you have for 'in.dnsbl.org'?

It's not one I recognise.

Steve

Here's what I am seeing now.  Early this morning when I looked at it the times were in 200-300

SURBL    0    multi.surbl.org            
URIBL Black    12503    multi.uribl.com    

I refreshed the page and now I have this

SURBL    0    multi.surbl.org    5 - 20            
URIBL Black    402    multi.uribl.com

HostKarma - Blacklist    66    hostkarma.junkemailfilter.com                
HostKarma - Brownlist    0    hostkarma.junkemailfilter.com                
HostKarma - Whitelist    -    hostkarma.junkemailfilter.com                
MailSpike L4    249    rep.mailspike.net                
MailSpike L5    0    rep.mailspike.net                
SORBS - Dynamic IP    369    dnsbl.sorbs.net                
SORBS - Proxy    0    dnsbl.sorbs.net                
SORBS - Socks    0    dnsbl.sorbs.net                
SpamCop    129    bl.spamcop.net                
Spamhaus - PBL    67    zen.spamhaus.org                
Spamhaus - SBL    0    zen.spamhaus.org                
Surriel    112    psbl.surriel.com                
Truncate    60    truncate.bgudb.net                
UCEProtect Level 1    141    dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net                
UCEProtect Level 2    123    dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net                
UCEProtect Level 3    142    dnsbl-3.uceprotect.net