I am running SF on a new server: 2.4 Ghz, 1 1/2 Gig RAM, 250 Gig Drive. I have all my Inbound Internet email coming into the SF box, run through its filters, then forward over to my email server.

I was getting a massive amount of email from Korea and China, and Canada, all SPAM. So I blocked those countries and those I knew I should not be receiving email from. (I don't have any customers getting email from turkey, etc...)

After about 10 minuters I started getting 100% CPU usage and my maximum connections were just that; maxed out.

I increased the max connections from 100 to 200; no change.

I increased them to 300; no change.

I stopped the Bayesian filtering; no change.

I stopped the SPF filtering; no change.

I removed ~1/2 of my 1800 phrases from the phrase filtering; no change.

The only way I got this to stop was to UNBLOCK Korea, China, and Canada at which point my CPU dropped to an average of 14% and my max connections went from 200+ to an average of 25. I REBLOCKED the exact same countries and the problem has not returned.

Any ideas why this happened?

I knew I forgeot to tell you something:

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