We have our Imail server stealthed behind a firewall. It doesn't answer to ICMP ping. Recently, a few folks have reported that their emails couldn't be delievered to our mail server. They both were sent from diffrent Postfix servers. They just didn't see our server as being up and available.
It has been suggested that the Postfix mail server will ping (depending on settings) before it attempts to send mail. If there is no response it assumes the server is down and never attempts to make the port connection. I really don't know anything about Postfix, or if this is the actual case. Anyone know?
It raises the question, is it in best practice to make sure a mail server is pingable?
I believe that it is best practice for a mailserver to be pingable. If someone asks me for help with E-mail issues, and it gets to the point where it looks like networking issues may be involved, if pings are disabled, I'll stop assisting until they are enabled. My philosophy is that if you are going to block ping packets, you're then responsible for any and all possible networking problems on your end (since you are disabling vital networking tools).
However, requiring that a mailserver respond to pings before sending it is not acceptable. Trying pinging www.ebay.com -- they don't allow pings (I'm guessing their mailservers are the same way).
-Scott
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