Why do so few mail providers support Port 587?

Thu Feb 24 22:14:17 UTC 2005

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?

-Jim P. 

On Thu, 2005-02-24 at 16:51 -0500, andrew2 at one.net wrote:
> owner-nanog at merit.edu wrote:
> > On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 16:08:42 EST, Nils Ketelsen said:
> > 
> >> On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 09:00:11PM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
> > 
> >>> What can be done to encourage universities and other mail providers
> >>> with large roaming user populations to support RFC2476/Port 587?
> >> 
> >> Give a good reason. That is still the missing part.
> > 
> > If you're a roaming user from that provider, and you're at
> > some other site that blocks or hijacks port 25, you can still send
> > mail by tossing it to your main provider's 587.   If that's not a
> > good enough reason to motivate the provider to support it, nothing
> > will (except maybe when the users show up en masse with pitchforks
> > and other implements of destruction...)
> 
> There seem to be many who feel there is no overwhelming reason to
> support 587.  I can certainly see that point of view, but I guess my
> question is what reasons do those of you with that viewpoint have *not*
> to implement it?  I just don't see the harm in either configuring your
> MTA to listen on an extra port, or just forward port 587 to 25 at the
> network level.  Other than a few man-hours for implementation what are
> the added costs/risks that make you so reluctant?  What am I missing?
> 
> Andrew
> 