[RndTbl] Shaw email - new woes

[Hartmut W Sager]

>> For a Tucows/OpenSRS reseller, that SMTP server costs $0.50 per month
>> - a negligible cost.

> That sounds great, I didn't know about that.  I will see if I can find
> it in their ever-changing wacky interface (unless you know the secret
> location!).  Any gotchas or limitations?

I can only think of one gotcha/limitation:  They (Tucows/OpenSRS) start you
with a daily outbound limit of about 50 e-mails, and they ramp it up very
rapidly (almost daily) to about 500 based on your good behaviour.

Indeed, good luck finding this stuff in their ever-changing wacky interface
though!  And I'm not about to torture myself explaining that in writing.
To help you, I'd have to be on the phone with you and in my Tucows/OpenSRS
interface at the same time.  One hint:  Use their new (overall screwy)
interface for this one.

> Oh ya, their email also hinted that if I change sendmail to send to
> their smarthost via auth/encrypted port 587, ...

I send from Gmail with SSL on port 465 (they also allow TLS on port 587)
using my Shaw consumer ISP (no static IP address), with no problems ever.

Here's an excerpt from my Gmail config area:

[... name deleted ...] <info at marityme.com>
Not an alias.
Mail is sent through: smtp-1.marityme.com
Secured connection on port 465 using SSL

The SMTP server smtp-1.marityme.com is just a CNAME to my Tucows/OpenSRS
SMTP server (with a very long name) - it makes me look more professional
that way.

Also, with the "not an alias" option selected, the detailed header source
code seen at the receiving end does not show my Gmail address.

Hartmut W Sager - Tel +1-204-339-8331


On 25 April 2015 at 23:46, Trevor Cordes <trevor at tecnopolis.ca> wrote:

> On 2015-04-25 Hartmut W Sager wrote:
> > I have a simple solution - don't be dependent on the whims of your
> > ISP for mail servers.
>
> I'm sort of half-dependent.  I'm running all my own sendmail servers.
> Incoming is all direct to me, but outgoing I'm forced through Shaw's
> smarthost since they block outgoing port 25 to all but that one host.
> If ISPs didn't block port 25 (net neutrality anyone?) I wouldn't even
> have to use their smarthost (not to open that discussion again...).
>
> > For a Tucows/OpenSRS reseller, that SMTP server costs $0.50 per month
> > - a negligible cost.
>
> That sounds great, I didn't know about that.  I will see if I can find
> it in their ever-changing wacky interface (unless you know the secret
> location!).  Any gotchas or limitations?
>
> Or Adam's VPS ideas, but I'm loathe to pay for something that *should*
> be free (and once was free).  It's not money, it's principle.  (RANT:
> the net was supposed to be about everyone being a server, not just a
> consumer, but they take away ports one by one saying "you aren't
> allowed to do that, go pay X company $Y/month to do it or buy our
> double/triple business plan pricing where you're still not allowed to
> do it but we'll turn a blind eye". /RANT)
>
> Ahhh.... I just spotted the reply from Shaw... this explains EVERYTHING:
>
> "We are in the middle of transitioning our spamcontrol to cloudmark and
> as you seem to send out via our server you were more than likely
> blocked. The blocks are in place for 24 hours and then are lifted."
>
> "I would suggest you use mail.shaw.ca or even the direct IP
> 64.59.128.135. In future I should suggest you attempt a telnet into the
> mail port and if it doesn’t resolve you could likely be blocked again."
>
> Interesting, so they are implementing blocking via DNS if I read that
> right?  Hmm... If I get blocked again, I might just hardcode their
> smarthost's IP into my sendmail.mc line... That might explain the weird
> domain in the original SMTP diag email... they were returning me a
> bogus domain name that doesn't resolve as a means to block.  If I'm
> reading all this correctly...
>
> How come whenever a company outsources email it becomes worse than
> useless?  Grrrr...
>
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