Why do so few mail providers support Port 587?

Fri Feb 25 13:49:15 UTC 2005

Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 16:51:50 EST, andrew2 at one.net said:
> 
>> 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?
> 
> You *don't* want to just forward 587 to 25.  You want to to
> use SMTP AUTH or similar on 587 to make sure only *your*
> users connect to it as a mail injection service (unless, of
> course, you *want* to be a spam relay ;)

I guess my assumption was that SMTP AUTH was already configured on port
25.  :-)  That's how we're doing it -- I've opened up port 587 more as a
move to help roaming users get around port 25 blocks imposed by various
ISP's around the country than anything else.  For us it was a fairly
trivial change to make, which is why I was inquiring as to the apparent
strenuous reluctance on the part of some to do the same.

Andrew