On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 02:30:01AM -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:
On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 23:36 -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
The rest of us run mail services in the real world, where lots of users buy laptops, and then actually <gasp, shock> *use* the portability and thus often end up behind some other ISP's port-25 block.
Why not a VPN solution. If you have mail servers that your users need, chances are that you also have file servers, internal web servers. calender servers, etc. Should file/web/calender servers all open one port or internal access and a second port for authenticated external access?
That might work for corporate networks, but not for hosting providers, isps, etc. We have about 10000 domains we manage, a lot of them have active mail users. Imagine a (low) average of 5 mailboxes per domain. That would mean my team would have to support 50000 VPN connections? No thank you! Furthermore, to setup a vpn, you need extra software, there are the issues when you are behind a NAT (or even double-NAT) etc. Almost all MUA's support auth-smtp on port 587, and thus this can be used from anywere (cyber-cafe when you are on holiday, pda's, even some cellphones, ...). BTW: Belgium's two biggest isps _do_ block tcp/25 outgoing... Kind Regards, Frank Louwers -- Openminds bvba www.openminds.be Tweebruggenstraat 16 - 9000 Gent - Belgium