[72997] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: XO Mail engineers?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Schairer)
Thu Aug 5 05:00:07 2004
In-Reply-To: <75634F04BFCFD511BF69009027DC8649ACD3ED@mailman.thenap.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
From: David Schairer <nanog@fluffysheep.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 01:59:26 -0700
To: Drew Weaver <drew.weaver@thenap.com>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Drew,
Here's the straight scoop:
The "New XO SMTP servers" are new in the sense that they go back to a=20
1997 platform rather than a 1993 platform that smtp.concentric.net=20
derives from. They're both from the Concentric* part of XO, and both=20
come out of my team, for what it's worth.
What we've been doing is consolidating some of the extremely old=20
systems onto the newer platforms, where we've been focusing our=20
development cycles for some time. 'smtp.concentric.net' isn't ceasing=20=
to exist, but it's now (or rather, extremely soon) will be on the=20
up-to-date systems.
That said, we're not forcing people to host mail with us in order to=20
use us for outbound relay. The one restriction that will be imposed by=20=
the new smtp.concentric.net that the old one didn't do was to require=20
the sender domain to exist on-platform rather than to allow completely=20=
unchecked relay by domain. Domain hosting is bundled with all our DSL=20=
and other network access products, so for the vast majority of people,=20=
this is no problem, because we don't need to be authoritative, or have=20=
MX pointed to us, for this to work. The one situation where people are=20=
impaired is if they want to send mail via a domain name of some other=20
ISP (e.g. aol.com), in which case they should use the relays provided=20
by their other ISP (we don't block outbound port 25 across the board),=20=
or if a customer is running a mail server/mailing list/etc of their=20
own, where said server might send out mail from any domain, in which=20
case that server should be doing its own MX routing and not relying on=20=
a relay.
Most of our DSL and other access customers that use an XO-provided=20
relay are already on the newer platform and have been for a long time,=20=
and only a few remain with configurations still pointing at the older=20
legacy systems. So the actual impact here is quite small.
You may now all commence flaming this, and me :)
--David Schairer
VP/Chief Systems Architect
XO Communications, Inc.
* We have recently relaunched the Concentric brand for our email and=20
hosting products -- www.concentric.com -- for those of you who remember=20=
it from the 'before time' :) I have a few discount codes left for=20
email/hosting accounts -- send me an email if interested.
On Aug 4, 2004, at 9:41 AM, Drew Weaver wrote:
> =A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0 It has come to my attention that XO =
has "done away" with=20
> some of concentric's email systems and have replaced them with new "XO=20=
> SMTP servers" these new XO SMTP servers aren't allowing people who=20
> don't have their mail hosted at XO to relay mail through them even=20
> though they are XO DSL customers, you guys may want to rethink your=20
> policy on this. It is generally the responsibility of the ISP to=20
> provide the outgoing mail transport for your connected users.
>
> =A0
>
> -Drew
>
> =A0
>
> =A0
