1 Jul
2004
1 Jul
'04
9:54 a.m.
a while back, we had quite some discussion about
blocking of port 25
traffic by ISPs.
If you look at last night's Slashdot article "Comcast Port 25 Blocks
Result In Less Spam", I guess you'll understand better why ISPs do
such a thing - and that it is indeed a good thing (tm).
If the ISP doesn't put this on the homepage and on the FAQ and the
hotline doesn't know anything about it, it is a really bad, bad thing,
believe me!
My girlfriend had to send several important mails for her project this
day. It wasn't fun. At first I thought it was the fault of the mail
provider. If I had been informed by the ISP I could have found an
alternative (perhaps by connecting my old analog modem).
It's really NASTY. I lost a LOT of time. Only by testing with telnet
(port 25) the connection to other SMTP servers I knew of, I could rule
out that it was the fault of my mail provider. But for this you need to
have a list of several SMTP servers at hand!!!
There is absolutely NO point in protecting this behavior. Port 25 is
(after port 80) the most important port one needs. Blocking it means to
deliver not the service that I have paid for!
The next time you buy a car and the factory has forgotten to put an
engine in it, I will say that it is a good thing, because an engine
would pollute the environment (a ressource we are more dependend of than
the network!)
Patrick Kaell