Re: ingress SMTP

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () baylink com>]

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                      jra () baylink com
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

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