On Sun, 29 Dec 2024, mick.crane wrote:
hello
I'm not really understanding the internet.
Can I do my own SMTP server and send mail off to the right place without
having the device open to random internet connections?
mick
Yes, but in practice many places won't accept mail from most home IPs
even if you can get the reverse DNS set up correctly - which most ISPs
don't support.
So except for eg AAISP in the UK and any similar ISPs elsewhere, doing
it from home is "impossible".
This is a real shame, as direct to MX smtp delivery can be as secure as
the recipient wants to make it and, more importantly, you actually know
if an email has been delivered.
One upon a time, many years ago, btinternet were particularly bad about
this, they pretty much never sent a bounce back when an email was
rejected, their forwarders just dropped the email.
An outbound mailserver does not have to receive email at all, it doesn't
have to accept inbound connections from anywhere and outbound only needs
port 25 (plus things like working DNS)
Tim.
