At 10:28 27/02/2001 -0800, Jennifer Glick wrote:
>Ben Bucksch wrote:
<delenda est>
> > Here in Gerrnany (and UK, too, I heard) is currently a **very** hard
> > competition between ISPs. It is not uncommon to switch ISPs every 3
> > months, or to use 2 ISPs, depending on the time of day (one during the
> > business hours, another one in the evening), even for average users.
> >
> > Most ISP servers correctly <http://www.orbs.org/whatisthis.html>
> > disallow "relaying" - accepting and delivering a mail, if neither
> > recipient (specified by email address) nor sender (usually recognized by
> > IP address) are related to the organization of mainting the SMTP server.
> >
> > I.e. I am Joe User, use 2 differnt ISPs. I set up one Mailnews account
> > for each ISP, following the Account Wizard. I expect it to work. It
> > doesn't. I cannot send mail while dialed into ISP B - I get the error
> > 'Server rejected mail'. I complain at my ISP B - after all, if works
> > correctly with ISP A. ISP B gets annoyed about Mozilla (because of many
> > tech support calls due to this problem).
<delenda est>
> > 2. Add logic to switch/select the default SMTP server for one session.
> >
> > IMO, this is important to be fixed for at least Mozilla 1.0, better even
> > Mozilla 0.9. I wonder why no bunch of angry ISP admins ran over us yet.
>
>The ability to have multiple SMTP servers, and be able to switch them,
>would be
>great. It was because of technical issues and time/resource constraints that
>this didn't happen originally.
>
>Ideally it would be great if each account could have its own associated SMTP
>server and the client could be smart enough to figure out how the user is
>currently connected and do the right thing (I don't know if that is possible).
Relaying is allowed for the correct IP addresses, so mail sent from any
account is fine so long as the smtp server is correct for the current
connection. The trick would be to capture or have the user specify the
subnet for each ISP and have a vestigial ISP account. At the time of
sending the current list of IP addresses (a machine may have more than one,
their local LAN IP address and any Internet routed address), would be
matched against the ISP subnets and the currently valid SMTP server chosen
accordingly.
The reason I call them ISP accounts is that you can have multiple POP or I
guess IMAP accounts at any one ISP, or a particular account may be entirely
disconnected from any individual ISP. De-coupling the mailbox from the
ISP, since all mailboxes will use the current SMTP server, simplifies the
process.
Simon
==================================
We are not the stuff that abides,
but patterns that perpetuate themselves.
Norbert Weiner
