Fun new policy at AOL

Thu Aug 28 20:21:01 UTC 2003

At 12:53 PM 8/28/2003, Tony Hain wrote:
>Matthew Crocker wrote:
> > Shouldn't customers that purchase IP services from an ISP use
> > the ISPs mail server as a smart host for outbound mail?
>
>Look carefully at that question and find the logic error.
>.......
>In case you missed it, the customer purchased 'IP' service, not 'ISP mail
>service'.

If the customer is purchasing IP only service, then they need to either 
purchase the *right* kind of IP service to operate their own ISP services 
off that connection, or they need to purchase ISP services from another 
vendor and then use that vendor's smarthost.  If the company they purchase 
IP services from blocks outbound port 25 except to their own smarthost, 
then the customer needs to buy ISP services from a vendor who offers mail 
services on an alternate port, or use the IP provider's smarthost.  This is 
not rocket science here.

The days of "I'm not an ISP but I play one on my residential-service 
dynamically allocated IP connection to the Internet" are over, just as the 
days of open relays are over.  Adjust, adapt, and move on.

jc