[78026] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Why do so few mail providers support Port 587?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Maimon)
Wed Feb 16 08:45:01 2005
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 08:43:59 -0500
From: Joe Maimon <jmaimon@ttec.com>
To: Thor Lancelot Simon <tls@NetBSD.org>
Cc: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>, nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <20050216021655.GB12411@NetBSD.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 09:00:11PM -0500, Sean Donelan wrote:
>
>
>>Sendmail now includes Port 587, although some people disagree how
>>its done. But Exchange and other mail servers are still difficult
>>for system administrators to configure Port 587 (if it doesn't say
>>click here for Port 587 during the Windows installer, its too
>>complicated).
>>
>>
>
>This is utterly silly. Running another full-access copy of the MTA
>on a different port than 25 achieves precisely nothing
>
>
I think we have ignored/trivialized the obvious.
Port 587 gives you the ability to class your connections as either
MTA<->MTA, Legacy User->MTA, MSP User ->MTA.
This is quite valuable as you now have the theoretical ability treat
them differently. Whether that means different
access/authentication/encryption/firewall/relay policies or whatever.
If all one does is run a full copy on that port then *THEY* have gained
almost nothing in practice, aside from further un-exploited
capabilities. However we all gain from ever increasing, even if it is
only incremental, support of well known RFC's.
Specific MTA discussions aside, port 587 is a good thing, and the more
of it the merrier.
