[61337] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Fun new policy at AOL
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Provo)
Thu Aug 28 06:58:28 2003
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2003 06:57:54 -0400
From: Joe Provo <nanog-post@rsuc.gweep.net>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Reply-To: nanog-post@rsuc.gweep.net
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0308281107020.30092-100000@MrServer>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Funny, I didn't think this was 'aol-mail-policy-list'.
This isn't new, crazy, nor out of step with generally accepted
practices. They [and many others] have been doing it for a
while. A dynamic block is generally listed as such in a service
provider's reverse DNS and also often in a voluntary listing
such as the DUL. AOL's specific definition is point 12 on their
postmaster FAQ (http://postmaster.info.aol.com/faq.html). If
a service provider is providing business/static addressing and
not making it clear, thats a customer<->provider issue.
> Whoa.. thats crazy. Obviously its an effort to stop relay
> forwarding from cable modem and DSL customers but there are
> *lots* of legitimate smtp servers sitting on customer sites
> on dynamic addresses.
I suspect your definition of legitimate is different than
the service providers' on whose network these machines are
sitting. Use the submit protocol for client/end stations.
SMTP is for inter-server traffic; if you have a server on
a residential connection, check your service agreement. If
you have a business service being incorrectly tagged as
residential, then you have a legitimate beef - with your
provider. Not AOL and not NANOG.
> I've numerous customers I can think of straight away who
> use setups such a MS Exchange on dynamic addresses where
> they poll POP3 boxes and send their own SMTP!
POP XMIT; SUBMIT [even MS products support it]. Use TLS if
you care that your customers are sharing their passwords
in the clear. Anyway, postmaster@aol might be more
interested in your concerns. Then again, they set the rules
for their network, so they might not.
Cheers,
Joe
--
RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE
