At 9:38 AM 3/9/07, Russel Oliver wrote:
But .. if I tell you that
in order to send mail to me you must allow certain access to your server you
are ok with that demand?
Depends on what the "certain access" is. But at this point, you
don't even know if Verizon is demanding that. All you know is
they're "demanding" something and not telling you what it is. I
agree that's pretty moronic.
It's possible that they are trying to do some kind of check on your
server to determine the validity of the sender. I may or may not be
"OK" with that, depending on what kind of check they're doing, and
what the definition of "OK" is.
I see quite a few ISPs that connect back to my server and initiate an
SMTP transaction (MAIL FROM and RCPT TO) to check the sender
validity. I think that's stupid, and it annoys me a little, but I'm
"OK" with it if "OK" means I'm not actively trying to prevent it.
I'm not "OK" with it if it means I have to make changes on my server
to make it work.
For example, I do SPF checking on my server. I've seen ISPs do their
validity checking from an IP address that's not in their published
SPF records. So when they connect to my server and initiate their
dummy SMTP transaction, I reject it because their sending server is
not a valid server for the domain in their FROM address. I'm not
going to turn off my SPF checking so their brain-dead scheme will
work.
Another example: I use a GREETDELAY patch which also drops servers
that try to send data before the greeting. I have a mailing list
with a couple of users whose ISPs connect back to mine for every
message, and get dropped for sending data too soon. So I'm "OK" with
them checking the validity of senders if they do it correctly (even
though I still think it's stupid), but I'm not "OK" with allowing
them to break the SMTP rules to do it.
I am going to get a dump of the session and try to figure out what
it is looking
for.
That might help. It might not. It's a good place to start. But, as
Kyle pointed out, it's still possible that they're rejecting your
message for some other reason unrelated to anything your server
tells them. That's the really frustrating part. Good luck.
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