Lazy network operators

Wed Apr 14 09:50:38 UTC 2004

In article <cistron.407D01BB.90708 at he.iki.fi>,
Petri Helenius  <pete at he.iki.fi> wrote:
>Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
>
>>That was solved 6 years ago. You let them use port 587 instead of 25.
>>http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2476.html
>
>How many MUAs default to port 587?

The one I use daily does.

>How many even know about 587 and give 
>it as an option other than fill-in-the-blank?

Setting up authenticated SMTP in most MUAs is an order of a magnitude
more complicated than changing port 25 to 587 anyway.

>...back to the computer literacy requirement again...
>How many support calls you get by requiring 587 instead of 25?

I don't know, but we get a lot of support calls about spam
and viruses, so if we can cut back on those ..

But the subject is still spot-on: not moving customers to port
587 for mail submission because it would be "too hard" is
laziness on the part of the ISP.

Mike.