Ottawa, ON -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/27/2010 -- Standards will make it easy to instrument systems to collect data and report it to one or more reputation-collection systems.

Roaring Penguin Software Inc., makers of the acclaimed CanIt line of anti-spam solutions, today announced that they have submitted an internet draft to the Internet Engineering Task Force. Several organizations (Project Honeypot, Spamhaus, RepuScore, etc.) maintain databases detailing the reputation of various IP addresses.

These organizations use various ad hoc methods to collect the reputation data. There is no standard for reporting events to reputation-collectors; this makes it hard to instrument a large number of systems to be data gatherers in a standard way.

Roaring Penguin Software supports open protocols to allow interoperability between Real Time block lists. Open Standards have made the Internet the powerful network that it is today. They have benefited both users and developers over the long run and prevent the constant reinvention of the wheel.

The following event types are defined for IPv4 and IPv6 events:

1. GREYLISTED: 2. UNGREYLISTED: 3. AUTO-SPAM: 4. HAND-SPAM: 5. AUTO-HAM: 6. HAND-HAM: 7. VALID-RECIPIENT: 8. INVALID-RECIPIENT: 9. VIRUS: 10 - 255. FUTURE:

Added in Version 2 of the Internet Draft

- An Extensible Report format consisting of tagged subreports.
- IP address reports can include a count byte to compress repeated events.
- A mechanism to report back software name and version.
- A mechanism for vendor-specific subreport formats.

The draft proposal can be viewed at:

http://www.mimedefang.org/reputation

Among other things the IETFs mission includes identifying, and proposing solutions to technical problems in the Internet and specifying the development or usage of protocols to solve such technical problems. The IETF makes recommendations to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) regarding the standardization of protocols and protocol usage in the Internet. An Internet Draft is the first step in the development of an Internet Protocol.

About Roaring Penguin
Founded in 1999, Roaring Penguin Software Inc., specializes in e-mail filtering. The company focuses on fighting spam at the mail server, with the acclaimed CanIt and MIMEDefang product lines. Today, Roaring Penguin develops, deploys and supports its spam- and virus-fighting products for customers that include enterprises, ISPs, campuses, web hosts, and government offices. For more information, visit Roaring Penguin Software at http://www.roaringpenguin.com.

About the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is an organized activity of the Internet Society (ISOC). ISOC is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. ISOC is supported by more than 90 organizational members and 26,000 individual members.