>I have a fairy stupid sounding question to ask. While diagnosing a remote
>location's e-mail troubles I had a tech from an ISP ask me if our mail
>server was "Open or Closed Relay". I didn't understand the question and
>felt quite dumb for not knowing. Do you know if I-Mail is open or closed
>and what exactly that means?
Virtually all mail servers can either be an "open relay" or not (actually,
I don't think the term "closed relay" is normally used; it's either "an
open relay" or "not an open relay).
Most mail servers run for two reasons: To accept mail destined to local
users, and to let users send out mail to other mail servers. Letting users
send out E-mail to other mail servers is called "relaying". It used to be
that all mail servers would let anyone relay mail through them, because of
the whole open nature of the Internet (it was assumed that if someone was
using your mail server, they had a good reason to). But, thanks to
spammers, that's no longer acceptable. If you let anyone relay mail
through your server, spammers will gladly do so, and send 100,000's of
spams at a time, clogging up your mail server.
An "open relay" is a mail server that will let anyone relay mail through
it. A mail server that is not an open relay (also called "locked down")
will only allow E-mail from authorized users (based on IP address, and/or
SMTP AUTH).
You can use our DNS Report at http://www.dnsreport.com to see if you are an
open relay.
-Scott
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