Why do so few mail providers support Port 587?

Sat Feb 19 19:51:11 UTC 2005

On Sat, 19 Feb 2005, J.D. Falk wrote:
> > Has AOL notified anyone in advance?  Quite a few provider-independent
> > mail providers were caught by surprise.
>
> 	Is there a mailing list that will reach all/most of these
> 	provider-independent mail providers?
>
> 	(If so, then that's where we should be having this discussion
> 	asking why they don't support port 587 yet.)

If there was a forum read by all/most of those provider-independent mail
providers, that would be great.

NANOG is one of the most widely read network operations mailing lists
on the network.  That is why items such as IANA assignments, root
server changes, wide-scale outages are posted here.

There are more specific mailing lists for some subjects, but they tend to
be read by people who are already familar with the subject.  The problem
is how do reach people who don't read such lists and aren't familar with
the subject.

If you look through many different mailing list archives for the last
eight years, you will find many different providers blocking port 25
and recommending support for port 587.  And you will find people being
"surprised" by the changes, or who knew about the changes but didn't do
anything until they were personally affected.