Why do so few mail providers support Port 587?

Thu Feb 24 23:02:20 UTC 2005

On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 17:14 -0500, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> If supporting one port is y hours of time and headache, then two ports
> is closer to y*2 than y (some might argue y-squared).  587 has some
> validity for providers of roaming services, but who else?  Why not
> implement 587 behavior (auth from the outside coming in, and accept all
> where destin == this system) on 25 and leave the rest alone?

I did run into a case where supporting port 587 was useful. I found out
the hard way that one Internet service provider for hotels blocked
outbound port 25, but not 587. So sending outbound mail to my mail relay
would have been impossible without support for port 587.
-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
email: smoot at tic.com
cell: +1 602 421 9005
home: +1 480 922 7313