On Wed, 30 Dec 2020 00:36:33 +0000 steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk allegedly wrote:
On 29/12/2020 15:12, mick wrote:
My domestic ISP (Plusnet) may have a relay host (or so it would appear from the support forum discussions between customers, even though they don't advertise it) but that would mean me tying myself to their infrastructure when I may not stay as their customer in future. And it might also mean that I would have to move my mail server onto my internal network when I already have a good, fully functional server on the wider internet.
Perhaps, perhaps not. I get that you might move, but if they have a service, perhaps you could use it. You may be able to access it without moving your server onto their network. If I understand correctly, my ISP lets me send via their smarthost simply by being directly connected to their network. However, their current published setup (IIRC) mandates sending a username and password before connecting to their server. Presumably if I did this, I could access their server from an IP address outside their network. YMMV on Plusnet.
From what I can gather on the plusnet forums their relay accepts any connection (on port 25 or 587) from a plusnet network address /without authentication/ but from a non plusnet network it requires authentication and only accepts connections on the submission port (587). Worryingly, there seems to be some confusion about whether TLS encryption is necessary - but that may just be that some people on the forum are confusing SASL and TLS. The authentication credentials seem to be your plusnet uid/password - and that bothers me because I'd guess that those would be revoked if I should leave plusnet.
I am still exploring the paid for third party relay mechanisms though - they may yet be necessary.
Would be interested if you post your results, just in case my ISP decides change config or ban email servers! :-)
Will do Steve. In fact I am considering documenting the whole process in case I should need it in future. There seem to quite a lot of commercial third party relays out there.
Mick
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