Fun new policy at AOL

Thu Aug 28 10:57:54 UTC 2003

Funny, I didn't think this was 'aol-mail-policy-list'.

This isn't new, crazy, nor out of step with generally accepted 
practices.  They [and many others] have been doing it for a 
while.  A dynamic block is generally listed as such in a service 
provider's reverse DNS and also often in a voluntary listing 
such as the DUL. AOL's specific definition is point 12 on their
postmaster FAQ (http://postmaster.info.aol.com/faq.html).  If 
a service provider is providing business/static addressing and
 not making it clear, thats a customer<->provider issue.

> Whoa.. thats crazy. Obviously its an effort to stop relay 
> forwarding from cable modem and DSL customers but there are 
> *lots* of legitimate smtp servers sitting on customer sites 
> on dynamic addresses.

I suspect your definition of legitimate is different than 
the service providers' on whose network these machines are 
sitting. Use the submit protocol for client/end stations. 
SMTP is for inter-server traffic; if you have a server on 
a residential connection, check your service agreement. If 
you have a business service being incorrectly tagged as 
residential, then you have a legitimate beef - with your 
provider. Not AOL and not NANOG.

> I've numerous customers I can think of straight away who 
> use setups such a MS Exchange on dynamic addresses where 
> they poll POP3 boxes and send their own SMTP!

POP XMIT; SUBMIT [even MS products support it]. Use TLS if 
you care that your customers are sharing their passwords 
in the clear.  Anyway, postmaster at aol might be more 
interested in your concerns. Then again, they set the rules
for their network, so they might not.

Cheers,

Joe

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