Fun new policy at AOL

Fri Aug 29 20:08:52 UTC 2003

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On 
> Behalf Of JC Dill
> Sent: August 29, 2003 3:43 PM
> To: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: RE: Fun new policy at AOL
> 
> 
> 
> At 12:32 PM 8/29/2003, Vivien M. wrote:
> 
> > > Time to switch to SMTP AUTH and use the same relay always.
> >
> >And what do you do if you're not the admin for the relay? And what 
> >about if the admin tells you "This is why we installed some webmail 
> >package. Use that instead."?
> 
> Either the webmail solution meets your needs, or you need to 
> obtain service 
> from a company that offers a solution that meets your needs.  
> Why is this 
> so hard to understand?

Because you're not understanding the issue... If you get an email account
from your employer/educational institution/etc and have to access it from
home and send mail from it, you can't "obtain service from a company that
offers a solution that meets your needs." If you can't convince your admins
(and good luck if you don't work in the IT department) that they need to set
up SMTP AUTH, then you are screwed... Get used to dialing into your
employer/educational institution/etc's network to do email, simply to comply
with these things, or hello webmail. And how will you explain to people who
quite happily have their POP3 clients set up to get mail from their work's
POP3 server, and SMTP to their local ISP that suddenly they can't do it that
way anymore?

If this solution had been implemented 5 years ago instead of the "no third
party relays" system now in place, I wouldn't be opposed to it... But the
issue is that the "use the local SMTP server to send" model is the main one
deployed in the field today, and if you start staying NOW that mail must be
relayed through a domain's particular SMTP server and that server doesn't
support SMTP AUTH relaying, you're now screwed... 

Vivien
-- 
Vivien M.
vivienm at dyndns.org
Assistant System Administrator
Dynamic DNS Network Services
http://www.dyndns.org/ 