Why do so few mail providers support Port 587?

Tue Mar 1 14:43:19 UTC 2005

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 09:18:19 EST, Nils Ketelsen said:

> 2. Port 587 Mailservers only make sense, when other Providers block
> port 25. My point is: If my ISP blocks any outgoing port, he is no longer
> an ISP I will buy service from.

That's not when you need a port 587 server...

>                                  Therefore I do not need a 587-Mailserver,
> as I do not use any ISP with Port 25-Blocking for connecting my sites or
> users.

Port 587 is for when you take your laptop along to visit your grandparents,
and they have cablemodem from an ISP that blocks port 25.  Now which do you do:

1) Whine at your grandparents about their choice of ISP?
2) Not send the mail you needed to send?
3) Make a long-distance (possibly international-rates) call to your ISP's dialup pool?
4) Send it back to your own ISP's 587 server and be happy?

(Hint - there's probably a good-sized niche market in offering business-class
mailhosting for people stuck behind port-25 blocks - they submit via 587/STARTTLS
and retrieve via POP/IMAP over SSL).

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 226 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20050301/81107f8c/attachment.sig>