[NTLUG:Discuss] OT: Austin SWBell smtp relay issues (not really a linux topic but... )

[Chris Cox]

jeremyb at univista.com wrote:

> Hey folks,  have any of you had issues with blocked/returned AOL.com 
> destined email sent from smtp servers on SWBell DSL lines?
>
>   I know this isn't exactly a Linux topic,  but I figured some of you 
> may have been affected by this.
>  I have two Austin clients that can't send any email to AOL email 
> addresses...   that's a real problem when half the
>  country seems to use AOL.
>
>   ...anyhow,  after doing the usual he-said-she-said song-and-dance 
> with SWBell, ASI and AOL I discovered that
> SWBell sent a list of 500 or so "suspicious" IPs to AOL.  Suspicious 
> meaning smtp relaying problems were "known" to exist on these 
> servers.  Well,  my clients don't relay mail and haven't been sending 
> spam. According to AOL, the heart of the matter is that SWBell 
> actually has the smtp relaying problems on their own server.  ...not 
> the necessarily 500 or so customers they
>
> Pimped out to AOL....   What? ...Huh?  ..when does this start to make 
> sense?  Now I've got clients that can't communicate with their 
> clients... and a bunch of multinational conglomerates pointing their 
> slimy Draconian fingers at each other.    I hate this part of the job.
>
Ah ha!  Since you are a business DSL customer with SW Bell, use that to
your advantage... this is something that SW Bell should help you out
with. (aren't dynamic IPs cool!... of course you probably have a
static one... nice that AOL doesn't discriminate!)

You may want to look into (at least) a backup outbound smtp
that you can use.  It would have allow you (and only you) to relay.
(make sure that server IS NOT on the SW Bell set of net blocks!)

Personally (on the cheap), I would set up a ssh tunnel going from
my localhost to an smtp somewhere else (that way, the one that is
somewhere else could be anywhere.... even a home address connection
that is firewalled against all incoming except port 22..ssh).

# ssh -2 -N -f 10025:localhost:25 some-user at remote-host
(something like that to set up a tunnel smtp at local port 10025 which
goes out through the smtp on remote-host, some-user may have
to have some privs to setup the tunnel to the remote port 25...)

Then I would configure my email clients to use port 10025 for smtp.
In bound mail wouldn't change in this case.... only the sending
of mail would use the smtp server running on remote-host.

Long term, you want SW Bell to address this issue... but for
quick workarounds, something like what I described above can
be "just the thing"... but probably best for just a band-aid...
unless you're running 2600.com or some such domain :-)