On Wed, Sep 03, 2008 at 11:56:51AM -0400, Justin Scott wrote: > As a small player who operates a mail server used by many local > businesses, this becomes a support issue for admins in our position. We > operate an SMTP server of our own that the employees of these various > companies use from work and at home. Everything works great until an > ISP decides to block 25 outbound. Now our customer cannot reach our > server, so they call us to complain that they can receive but not send > e-mail. We, being somewhat intelligent, have a support process in place > to walk the customer through the SMTP port change from 25 to one of our > two alternate ports. > > The problem, however, is that the customer simply cannot understand why > their e-mail worked one day and doesn't the next. In their eyes the > system used to work, and now it doesn't, so that must mean that we broke > it and that we don't know what we're doing.
I feel your pain, local compadre, but I'm on their side. Here's your script: "Allowing unfiltered public access to port 25 is one of the things that increases everyone's spam load, and your ISP is trying to be a Good Neighbor in blocking access to anyone's servers but their own; many ISPs are moving towards this safer configuration. We're a good neighbor, as well, and support Mail Submission Protocol on port 587, and here's how you set it up -- and it will work from pretty much anywhere forever." Which is a safe thing to tell people because it is decidedly *not* best practice to block 587. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink [EMAIL PROTECTED] Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com '87 e24 St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274 Those who cast the vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything. -- (Josef Stalin)
