[RndTbl] Blocking Port 25

Trevor Cordes trevor at tecnopolis.ca
Wed May 23 18:06:58 CDT 2007


On 23 May, Sean Walberg wrote:
> Mine went out this morning... Thanks for sending the note around, Trevor.

Mine just went too, when I woke up today.  And one other customer of
mine is hosed too.  I still have about 10 other customers who *aren't*
blocked.  Nice consistency!  I've written a little it of code into my
service-watcher scripts to check for blocked smtp then auto-notify me
via a shawmail-routed email address.  I'll watch as they fall one by
one.

As for "net bigotry", I'm an administrator of about 20 separate sites
run off of do-it-all linux firewall/servers.  As an admin, I can
unequivocally say that I'd much rather have port 25 open and deal with
the spam myself (greylisting, bayes, etc), than have to deal with ISP's
mail servers.  It's a matter of control.  With my own MTA talking direct
to the recipient MTA, I know an email got through, at least out of my
end of the "cloud".  With Shaw/MTS in the way, they can drop whatever
email they like without a bounce just because it fits into some
program's overaggressive idea of what spam is.  In addition, the delays
introduced by Shaw/MTS can often be horrible.  Lastly, it completely
farks up my DK/SPF setup, neither of which handles smarthost forwarding
very well.

Of course, I've said this all before, and I know some disagree with me,
mostly those who have dedicated/static pipes on the corporate budget.

To me, it's all about freedom: "bit freedom", don't tell me what I can
and can't do with my bits.  At least I know Stallman would be on my side
;-)



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