What are the major changes between the old orbs and the new?
The primary one is the emphasis on blocking being the decision of the admin whose server is doing the blocking and on ORBS being soley a database of open relays – which doesn’t scan for open hosts, but relies on mailed in nominations and confirmatory relay tests. I’ve been asking that people not scan netblocks for hosts to nominate, because IMRSS is doing that anyway and the issue of scanning is a very hot topic. I believe that although IMRSS will be extremely effective for those who use it, the fact that it’s fed by scaners will mean a large majority of mailserver admins won’t be allowed to use it. IMRSS is a full-blown netblock scanning system. Ron claims to have found in excess of 150,000 open hosts so far. By comparison, ORBS has 50,000 and my guess is 99% of them were picked up for spam relaying.
