I kick myself for voting them the best ISP in a survey some time back. Those rotten assholes have gone mad or something? We should all come together and sue them for wasting so many man hours to fix this idiosyncrasy.
But the current situation is bad, so a few questions.
1. If we have our own smtp server running (eg. exim, qmail) then will the current restrictions of VSNL affect us? Or will it affect only those using VSNL smtp gateways?
2. If we have our own smtp gateway, we bypass vsnl dont we?
quasi
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Sometime Today, Q u a s i assembled some asciibets to say:
I kick myself for voting them the best ISP in a survey some time back. Those rotten assholes have gone mad or something? We should
What is this in regard to? I don't think I've received the original mail, so it would make sense to quote part of the original in your reply.
- If we have our own smtp gateway, we bypass vsnl dont we?
Only if you're permanently connected to the net. If you're not, then you'll find a lot of mails waiting indefinitely in your queue because the destination was not available when you were connected.
Philip
On Sat, 11 Aug 2001, Q u a s i spewed into the ether:
I kick myself for voting them the best ISP in a survey some time back. Those rotten assholes have gone mad or something? We should all come together and sue them for wasting so many man hours to fix this idiosyncrasy.
Don't waste your time. Either run your own mail servers, or switch ISPs.
But the current situation is bad, so a few questions.
- If we have our own smtp server running (eg. exim, qmail) then will
the current restrictions of VSNL affect us? Or will it affect only those using VSNL smtp gateways?
Currently, VSNL isn't blocking outbound port 25. So you can use your own mail server. How you handle queuing is a different matter. See current headers. Postfix rocks
- If we have our own smtp gateway, we bypass vsnl dont we?
Yes, unless you have VSNL set as a smarthost. I suggest running a caching nameserver on your mail serveer, speeds things up quite a bit.
Devdas Bhagat
--- Devdas Bhagat dodobh@nettaxi.com wrote:
On Sat, 11 Aug 2001, Q u a s i spewed into the ether:
I kick myself for voting them the best ISP in a
survey some time
back. Those rotten assholes have gone mad or
something? We should
all come together and sue them for wasting so many
man hours to fix
this idiosyncrasy.
Don't waste your time. Either run your own mail servers, or switch ISPs.
But the current situation is bad, so a few
questions.
- If we have our own smtp server running (eg.
exim, qmail) then will
the current restrictions of VSNL affect us? Or
will it affect only
those using VSNL smtp gateways?
Currently, VSNL isn't blocking outbound port 25. So you can use your own mail server. How you handle queuing is a different matter. See current headers. Postfix rocks
- If we have our own smtp gateway, we bypass vsnl
dont we? Yes, unless you have VSNL set as a smarthost. I suggest running a caching nameserver on your mail serveer, speeds things up quite a bit.
I don't understand one thing here. I believe that VSNL has stopped permitting relaying through its mailservers, unless the remote host is part of VSNL's domain. That is something which would be well within VSNL's rights, or isn't it?
My other question is, if that is not the case, what does VSNL verify? The envelope sender's address or the mail header itself?
Rgds,
Krishnan
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At 11:44 PM 8/11/01 -0700, Krishnan wrote:
I don't understand one thing here. I believe that VSNL has stopped permitting relaying through its mailservers, unless the remote host is part of VSNL's domain. That is something which would be well within VSNL's rights, or isn't it?
They have stopped even for hosts in their domain. Even dial up connections for which they provided pooled IP's. If you wanna use their mail servers you have to have a vsnl.net, vsnl.com, vsnl.in, vsnl.net.in, or you have to pay a hefty fee.
This is one major nasty move.
quasi
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Sometime on Aug 12, Q u a s i assembled some asciibets to say:
They have stopped even for hosts in their domain. Even dial up connections for which they provided pooled IP's. If you wanna use their mail servers you have to have a vsnl.net, vsnl.com, vsnl.in,
My address works. If you notice, it is not a vsnl.* address. I still go through vsnl.
Philip
At 01:04 AM 8/13/01 +0530, Philip wrote:
My address works. If you notice, it is not a vsnl.* address. I still go through vsnl.
Are you running your own smtp service? They are blocking (according to the Times) the use of their smtp servers.
I suppose you couldnt do telnet bom3.vsnl.net.in 25 and then mail from <something@notvsnl.*> and get away with it. If this is not the case then I am totally confused about the Times article.
Also lemme ask another question : If I run, say, exim on my debian box, how do I queue messages without sending them immediately? I have an dial-up account and would like exim to try to send messages only when I am online.
quasi
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Sometime on Aug 13, Q u a s i assembled some asciibets to say:
At 01:04 AM 8/13/01 +0530, Philip wrote:
My address works. If you notice, it is not a vsnl.* address. I still go through vsnl.
Are you running your own smtp service? They are blocking (according
Yes, but with vsnl as the smart host.
I suppose you couldnt do telnet bom3.vsnl.net.in 25 and then mail from <something@notvsnl.*> and get away with it. If this is not the
This never worked. It used to work on bom3 actually, but not on bom7 and bom8.
Philip
Sometime today, Philip S Tellis wrote:
Yes, but with vsnl as the smart host.
What is smart host? I am running a local smtp and I am able to send mails to almost anyone using almost any From address. I have not set smart host. What is the use of smart host?
Sorry, I have not bothered to RTFM.
Manish J.
On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, Manish Jethani wrote:
What is smart host? I am running a local smtp and I am able to send
Things you know (I hope):
When one sends mail, it goes to a mail queue on the mail server (which may be local). The mail server periodically tries to send all mails in the queue. There are cases (destination not reachable, name server error, etc.) when a mail cannot be delivered, and remains in the queue.
Problem:
If the mail server is permanently connected to the net, then there is no problem, because it can try the servers indefinitely until it makes a connection. If it's not however, then we have a problem. If mails cannot be sent when a net connection has been estabilished, then they may have to wait for a very long time in the queue.
Smart Hosts:
Enter smart hosts. They may or may not be smart actually, what's important is that they are connected to the net permanently. Your local mail server can forward all mail to the smart host when it is connected, and then the smart host takes over the job of sending the mail when it can.
Smart?
So what's so smart about these hosts? Basically, by doing NS lookups on the MX record of a destination domain, a mail server can figure out exactly who the mail exchanger for that domain is, and forward all mail for that domain to that host. Thus, if you send mail to 5 yahoo.com addresses and three hotmail.com users, the smart host will split this into two mails, send one to any one of:
mx1.mail.yahoo.com, mx2.mail.yahoo.com, mx3.mail.yahoo.com, mx4.mail.yahoo.com, mta-v18.mail.yahoo.com
in that order, depending on which is available first, and the second to any one of:
mc1.law13.hotmail.com, mc2.law13.hotmail.com, mc3.law13.hotmail.com, mc4.law13.hotmail.com, mc5.law13.hotmail.com, mc6.law13.hotmail.com, mc1.law5.hotmail.com, mc2.law5.hotmail.com, mc4.law5.hotmail.com, mc5.law5.hotmail.com, mc6.law5.hotmail.com, mc7.law5.hotmail.com
in any order.
Can it get smarter?
Kind of! You can manually specify which gateways to use to reach different domains. But never mind about this.
Does that clear things up? If it does, then someone should edit this and convert it to another tute.
Philip
Sometime today, Philip S Tellis wrote:
When one sends mail, it goes to a mail queue on the mail server (which may be local). The mail server periodically tries to send all mails in the queue. There are cases (destination not reachable, name server error, etc.) when a mail cannot be delivered, and remains in the queue.
Hmmm. When I go online, I do /usr/sbin/sendmail -q -v to send the messages. But I have to give up sometimes, so I go to /var/spool/mqueue/ and delete the messages that are struggling. :) It works for most of my emailing, except a few rare cases.
[snip] Enter smart hosts. They may or may not be smart actually, what's important is that they are connected to the net permanently. Your local mail server can forward all mail to the smart host when it is connected, and then the smart host takes over the job of sending the mail when it can. [snip]
Tnx. Tnx, Satya.
Manish J.
On Aug 14, 2001 at 11:31, Manish Jethani wrote:
Sometime today, Philip S Tellis wrote:
Yes, but with vsnl as the smart host.
What is smart host? I am running a local smtp and I am able to
Your MTA sends everything to your smart host, because it knows the smart host is smart enough to do the right thing. How does it know? Because you told it.
*You* haven't, so it simply figures out which way to route mail all by itself. I think it's DS in sendmail.cf and relay in postfix.
-
Devdas Bhagat -
Manish Jethani -
Philip S Tellis -
Q u a s i -
Rajen Parekh -
S. Krishnan -
Satya