[51392] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Paul's Mailfrom (Was: IETF SMTP Working Group Proposal at smtpng.org)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeroen Massar)
Mon Aug 26 19:55:25 2002
From: "Jeroen Massar" <jeroen@unfix.org>
To: <jtk@aharp.is-net.depaul.edu>, <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 01:54:39 +0200
In-Reply-To: <20020826181346.726aa63f.jtk@depaul.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
John Kristoff wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Aug 2002 00:59:49 +0200
> "Jeroen Massar" <jeroen@unfix.org> wrote:
> > Nice rant Randy, but if you even ever wondered why the wording "Mail
> > Relay" exists you might see that if an
> > ISP simply forwards all outgoing tcp port 25 traffic to one of their
> > relays and protects that from weird spam
>
> The point is that 25 is just a number. You'll eventually be blocking
> all numbers sooner or later (and re-inventing dumb terminals).
Another person who can't read.
SMTP is a protocol which is based on relaying messages from one
mailserver to another.
An endnode (especially workstations) don't need to run SMTP.
ISP/Company's already have SMTP servers which are setup to relay for
their clients.
So what's so bad about forwarding all tcp/25 traffic over that relay and
letting that relay decide if the MAIL FROM: is allowed to be relayed?
And if a client wants to mail from another domain which isn't relayed by
it's upstream ISP, he/she could ask it's ISP to do so.
Yes this will add an administrative hassle, but doesn't spam imply that
also?
The whole problem is yet again that a small amount of people (this time
spammers) make a whole lot of problems for a lot of people (we).
Also this setup is somewhat the same as checking from an smtp-server
whether the sending server is also actually running an smtp...
Fortunatly we got SpamAssasin/Razor nowadays so the spam that does get
through gets filtered out without bothering me or anybody else using
these tools.
Greets,
Jeroen
