[PLUG] E-mail server?

[someone]

On Mon, 2006-12-25 at 20:36 -0800, m0gely wrote:
> drew wymore wrote:
> > Robert-
> > Its because most ISP's block outbound email that isn't from their same
> > netblock, so when Hevanet's server's receive your request and see that its
> > from a Qwest IP address they block it based on that, blame spammers. You 
> > may
> > want to ping Hevanet support and see if they have any authenticated SMTP
> > servers available which would then let you send email after you have sent
> > your username and password and its been verified by Hevanet's SMTP server.
> 
> Or just use Qwest's SMTP for sending email.

Because of the spam issue, I question the idea of using Qwest's smtp
server to send email and another ISP's email account to receive it.
Because of SPF, sender protection framework, someone could say that
heavanet accounts aren't hosted by Qwest and reject email from you 
based on that.  If you can keep your heavanet account open and forward
email from your qwest account to it, then as long as you use Qwest
credentials with your qwest account you should be fine.  Downside, if
you want people to send to a qwest email account you will have 
to inform them that your email address has changed.  If you want from
qwest with a reply address of heavanet, you'll have to set that up
in whichever mail user agent you use.  This means you'll have to
think, "I'm doing something different," if you use any qwest supplied
web based email interface.  If you want to make sure the reply-to
doesn't go to the qwest account...

Getting a static ip and domain name to do an email site 
allows one to keep the same email addresses no matter which 
DSL provider is chosen.  Unfortunately, Comcast is out for 
doing your own domain unless you want to mess with dynamic 
dns.  Too bad there isn't a competitor to Comcast offering 
static subnets at a reasonable price.  I don't buy Comcast's, 
"putting everyone on dynamic ip addresses makes managing our 
network easier," comments by the way.

If you go to http://register.com/, 
you are looking at $35/year adjusted down for people who pay for 
more than one year at a time.  I would imagine you are going to
pay at least $5 per ip for static ip addresses.  There is also
probably going to be a bridging fee because the Actiontec will
need to be programmed to stop doing NAT and reprogrammed to 
silently pass packets across qwest's network onto yours and 
vice versa.

What I am curious about, can you dynamically map a domain name to
a dynamically assigned ip address?  It's safer to have someone
intercept your email for you in this case and you grab it 
later via pop.  The problem with trying to dynamically change 
the dns address of your email server is the delay for those 
changes to propagate across the Internet.  Stale information 
could cause email to be routed wrong and get lost.  Setting 
up SPF would be difficult, I guess you'd have to know the
subnet you are being assigned out of and allow every single 
ip address in it.  The latter isn't a very secure plan.  In
essence, you are better off going with a hosting service if 
you don't have your own static subnet on the Internet.

If I were to start my own ISP, I wouldn't put anyone on random
ip addresses.  Everybody would be static, but I'd offer dhcp
service and a web interface to allow customers to configure 
it that want to use it.  I'd also provide dns service standard 
for those who don't want to do dns on their own servers.  The
trick, keep intentional ip misconfigurations from interfering
with other customers.  Instead of an email service, customers
do their own email servers and they can forward to a filtering
server that I provide for them if they want it.

     Michael C. Robinson