Lazy network operators

Tue Apr 13 23:56:55 UTC 2004

>At 11:15 PM +0200 4/13/04, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
>This approach has two main advantages over filtering port 25:
>
>1. People can still talk to unlisted SMTP hosts if they feel they have a good reason to do so (ie, I get >to deliver messages directly to my server from home rather than being forced to use my service >provider's which may or may not work)

You're right...   Rather than simply having you tell your provider that you're 
responsible and having port 25 outward opened up,  the freedom for anyone
to send to port 25 on an ad-hoc basis like we have today is a better idea.  
Today's spam isn't a problem; everything's working as designed. 

>The good news is that the IETF is now starting work on this, so expect results in two or three years.

Great idea: here's a case where we need less connectivity and better
operational practices, but rather than take that task on, we should do
more protocol work.

The reality is that the vast majority of email is handed off to a designated
mail relay (whether we're talking about consumer connections or office
environments), and if we actually configured connectivity in this matter,
there wouldn't be a problem.

/John