* * * * *
                                        
                   I suspect email isn't long for this world
                                        
I'll go out on a limb here and make a prediction: By January of 2009, email
as we know it will be dead [1]. It will have to be, given these current stats
at The Company (which is a small webhosting company):

Table: Amount of spam through our spam firewall
	Total	%	Day	%	Hour	%
------------------------------
Blocked	53,632,194	94	47,855	96	2,425	95
Blocked: Virus	17,276	0	0	0	0	0
Quarantined	54	0	0	0	0	0
Allowed: Tagged	658,888	1	177	0	7	0
Allowed	2,807,144	5	1,957	4	119	5
Total Received	57,115,556	100	49,989	100	2,551	100

As a friend said (on a private post—hope he doesn't mind me posting it here):

> But really I hope you all, being support and customer care, really know
> that we, being server ops, are doing everything we can to keep up with the
> dramatic increase in mail volume internet wide.
> 
> Yesterday alone we saw a temporary spike of email volume that was measured
> at 100Mb (Megabit)/sec for about 2 hours. This is really really hard to
> keep up with, and has a lot to do with why I am getting out of the
> webhosting industry all together.
> 

And another friend (not the same as quoted above) is seriously looking for
another job away from webhosting as well, although I don't know if it has to
do with the email volume or not.

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/11/21.1

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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