[92112] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: comast email issues, who else has them?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen Sprunk)
Thu Sep 7 14:42:12 2006
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org>
To: "Sean Donelan" <sean@donelan.com>
Cc: <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 13:10:03 -0500
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Thus spake "Sean Donelan" <sean@donelan.com>
> But there is no requirement to use your ISP's mail server or any other
> application from your ISP. Likewise there is no requirement for a ISP
> to offer any E-mail or Usenet, or FTP, or legal music downloads, or
> any
> other application to its customers. There isn't even a requirement
> for it
> to have any customer service. Few of the large free Email providers
> have any easy way to talk to any human about mail problems. So you
> don't even get the satisfaction of yelling at a first level tech about
> your
> frustrations.
However, the reality is that a significant fraction of users will use
their ISP's email service, if one is provided. They'll tolerate minor
failures because changing your email address and distributing it to
everyone is such a hassle. More and more folks are wising up to this
and switching to Yahoo mail or Gmail so they don't have to do it ever
again, but OTOH those services are better-run than most ISP mail
systems.
> I happen to think the problem is with the bulk mail forwarding
> services that don't pre-filter mail. But that's just my opinion. I
> choose not
> to use unfiltered bulk mail forwarding services so I don't have those
> problems.
That's not the problem, because I'm not using a bulk mail forwarding
service. It's just a single vanity domain hosted by a single Linux box
with a half-dozen accounts. And I read the mail _on that box_. There
is nothing complicated going on here; we're talking stuff people were
doing just fine in the 1980s. I can get email from and send email to
anyone on the planet reliably except Comcast customers, which,
unfortunately, includes several family members and friends. And even
that worked for years; it just broke a few months ago.
The real killer is it's broken in both directions; I can't come up with
any legitimate reason for that. Inbound (to comcast), I could blame on
spam filters, but not outbound.
S
Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking
