At 10:59 AM 7/2/2005, you wrote:
Well, I can't say I didn't do the the same thing until recently. I
chose my own secret port number to bypass a port 25 block. Blocking
port 25 is becoming a major reality now. I was merely saying that
there is a standard way to allow things to happen. You will see
back there at Matt Simerson's site that he is now getting qmail to
effectively listen on SMTP and submission ports to start abinding by
the RFC for roaming users.
Since it is a rather new phenonimon, not many know about it, but as
more ISP's block and more mail providers (like you and I) try to
avoid these issues, the port 587 number will become fairly
well-known. And, by the way, in the case of a clueless user anyway,
one port number is just as hard as another to use, as they will need
a lot of handholding to setup their client. And for those who get
the idea, port 587 will eventually be memorable.
We weren't around when the RFC got written, or we might have tried
for a smarter port number. In any case, I only feel that once I
catch a clue, I might as well start using the right port number. I
just opened up both the one I picked and 587, and determined to
stick with the published standard unless necessary. Rumors persist
that some ISP's might block port 587, but that is mostly hearsay.
yep, all good points. it certainly won't *hurt* anything for me to
fire up another smtp on the submission port.
as it is, the ports for mail i see codified are:
25 SMTP
465 SMTP-SSL (but shared with cisco's URD)
587 Submission
110 POP3
995 POP3-TLS/SSL
143 IMAP4
993 IMAP-TLS/SSL
eek. i suppose for the average user, they're *all* random numbers, really.
Paul Theodoropoulos
http://www.anastrophe.com
http://www.smileglobal.com
