Port 25 and Static/Dynamic IP for Listserve SW

[Derek Broughton]

Sandy Harris wrote:

> The ISP may also (possibly for an extra fee)
> let customers run their own MTAs which are
> set up to relay everything through the ISP's
> MTA. The term "smarthost" is used; I'm hazy
> one exactly what it means.

I'm not at all sure how an ISP could charge you for using a smarthost.  In 
that configuration, your local MTA looks like any other mail client.  For a 
_price_, they might actually let you run a full MTA - in which case they'll 
almost certainly include a static IP.

> The simplest solution for you is to go to a
> company that specialises in hosting, and
> pay them to register some domain such
> as "pumpkineater.com" and run a server
> for it with mailman plus some MTA and a
> web server. That gives you everything you
> need, including an automated web archive
> of the mailing list(s).

Well, the _simplest_ solution, imo, is to set up a list in gmail or yahoo.  
But if you really want to host it on your home system, it's not rocket 
science.

1) Your ISP has to allow you to receive mail at all the various addresses a 
list would need (typically there are at least three addresses associated 
with a list - the address you post to, one for list info requests and one to 
the list administrator)

2) Fetchmail to get the list mail from your ISP and deliver it to the list 
software

3) A local MTA to post the list messages back through the ISP's SMTP.
> 
> Just trying to run your own MTA without
> smarthosting (that is, without piping
> everything through the ISP MTA) is
> likely to cause problems. Spammers
> do that, firing off messages to mail
> servers from dynamic IP addresses.
> It is therefore common both for ISPs
> to block outgoing connections to Port
> 25 and for recipient servers to refuse
> messages from dynamic IP addresses.

Which can't be repeated often enough...
-- 
derek