postfwd1 vs postfwd2


As you might have noticed, there are two different versions of postfwd available - postfwd(1) and postfwd2. Which version fits best for you depends on your setup. Both versions use the same ruleset parser*. They also share the basic command line arguments (use both with --help for details). This allows to switch easily between them.

The following table might help you to decide which version to use. Basically you should stick with postfwd1 for the moment unless you encounter performance issues with dns based checks or very complex rulesets with thousands of checks. Please note that, due to implementation, rate limits are handled faster by postfwd1 at the moment.

Version postfwd1 postfwd2
    Specs
  • Single process (Multiplexer)
  • Small memory footprint
  • Multiple processes (Preforker)
  • Scales with multiple cpus/cores
  • Builtin watchdog function
  • Debug classes
    Usage
  • Fits for most setups
  • Any single core system
  • Rate-limit-only rulesets
  • High throughput setups with lots of requests per second and
    • rulesets that use a lot of dnsbl lookups
    • really huge rulesets containing tons of checks
    *Issues
  • Does not support multiple rate limits for the same item (yet)