> > Do they advertise "unlimited access?"
> Huh? I'm not sure what you mean with regards to email.
It's kind of funny, I had this problem on Friday, with someone in our company using
AT&T. Since we have virus scanning and IMail on the same machine, I opened up the
port that IMail uses, so this person could get his E-mail sent. The change in the
firewall wasn't going to be made until after I left for the day. That night, I
checked to make sure that the new port was open, and it was... but I nearly paniced
when I found out that the normal SMTP port (that all incoming E-mail comes in on) was
down! Later in the weekend, I confirmed with my ISP (a local one) that they are
blocking SMTP port access.
My ISP obviously thought I was a hacker (I mentioned that I administer a mail server
and oversee others, and they said that they couldn't imagine how I could need access
to the SMTP port on my mail server). I explained almost 10 different reasons why I
need access to the SMTP port. Unfortunately, they are not restricting access to the
SMTP port, they are eliminating it for everyone. There is no way to access it.
One person in this list mentioned that it just meant an extra hop for his outgoing
E-mail. That isn't the problem. The problem is that the only way to make sure that
your mail server is up and running, and the only way to make sure it is configured
properly and is working properly is to connect to it via the SMTP port. The way I had
always understood, "Full Internet Access" means that you can connect to any port on
any computer.
Am I the only one who connects to port 25 to check out my server? I can certainly see
the need to block unnecessary access to port 25 (we of all people should understand
that). However, is it unreasonable of me to expect that I should be able to find an
ISP that allows this? If all dialup ISPs deny access to the SMTP port, how can I test
things from home?
-Scott
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