I'm not up on the RFC's but I'm trying to figure out why IMAIL puts the
_reported_ hostname in the email header when a remote user attaches to the
SMTP server to send mail out. For example, I have a dialup customer who sent
me mail from his PC. In Windows 9x, he has a host name and domain name
filled in (danny.mypc.com for example).

When he sends me an email message, IMAIL reports something like

Received: from danny.mypc.com [207.202.83.3] by www2.njaccess.com
  (SMTPD32-5.01) id AD9A62C004E; Fri, 20 Aug 1999 11:00:42 EST

The problem is that is NOT the true hostname assigned to my 207.202.83.3
dialup port. The reverse DNS for that IP is ppp-03.njaccess.com.

I have been looking at headers from various other mail systems (sendMail for
example). Most display both the reported and true reverse DNS hostnames
like:

danny.mypc.com (ppp-03.njaccess.com [207.202.83.3])

In any case, shouldn't IMAIL at least imprint the reverse DNS entry if one
exists, and only imprint the reported hostname if a reverse DNS entry
doesn't exist? This is becoming more standard now, making it easier for us
mail admins to track down spammers.

I know it's really pretty trivial -- it's easy to do manual lookups. It's
more of a curiousity as to why IMAIL doesn't do a reverse lookup on an
incoming SMTP connection and stamp that in the mail header.

Also, is Ipswitch planning on allowing us to customize the "welcome" message
that IMAIL sends when an incoming SMTP connection is opened on port 25?
There are efforts under way to use information contained within that opening
welcome as an enforceable policy on spamming. Similar to how AOL spews out
those 3 lines of gook about using their mail servers for spam.


...Scot

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