Re: Fun new policy at AOL

[Joel Jaeggli <joelja () darkwing uoregon edu>]

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003, Matthew Crocker wrote:

> Shouldn't customers that purchase IP services from an ISP use the ISPs 
> mail server as a smart host for outbound mail? 

applying that standard just how large do you have to get before 
you "graduate" to running your own smtp server. "I'm sorry we won't accept 
mail from you because you're not an lir?"

> We block outbound port 
> 25 connections on our dialup and DSL pool.  We ask our customers that 
> have their own mail servers to configure them to forward through our 
> mail servers.  We get SPAM/abuse notifications that way and can kick 
> the customer off the network.  We also block inbound port 25 
> connections unless they are coming from our mail server and require the 
> customer setup their MX record to forward through our mail server.  We 
> virus scan all mail coming and going that way.  We protect our 
> customers from the network and our network from our customers.  We are 
> currently blocking over 3k Sobigs/hour on our mail servers.  I would 
> rather have that then all my bandwidth eaten up by Sobig on all of my 
> dialup/DSL connections.
>
> SMTP & DNS should be run through the servers provided by the ISP for 
> the exact purpose.  There is no valid reason for a dialup customer to 
> go direct to root-servers.net and there is no reason why a dialup user 
> should be sending mail directly to AOL, or any mail server for that 
> matter (besides their host ISP)
>
> -Matt

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Joel Jaeggli           Unix Consulting         joelja () darkwing uoregon edu    
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