Re: Fun new policy at AOL

[Joe Provo]

Funny, I didn't think this was 'aol-mail-policy-list'.

This isn't new, crazy, nor out of step with generally accepted 
practices.  They [and many others] have been doing it for a 
while.  A dynamic block is generally listed as such in a service 
provider's reverse DNS and also often in a voluntary listing 
such as the DUL. AOL's specific definition is point 12 on their
postmaster FAQ (http://postmaster.info.aol.com/faq.html).  If 
a service provider is providing business/static addressing and
 not making it clear, thats a customer<->provider issue.

> Whoa.. thats crazy. Obviously its an effort to stop relay 
> forwarding from cable modem and DSL customers but there are 
> *lots* of legitimate smtp servers sitting on customer sites 
> on dynamic addresses.

I suspect your definition of legitimate is different than 
the service providers' on whose network these machines are 
sitting. Use the submit protocol for client/end stations. 
SMTP is for inter-server traffic; if you have a server on 
a residential connection, check your service agreement. If 
you have a business service being incorrectly tagged as 
residential, then you have a legitimate beef - with your 
provider. Not AOL and not NANOG.

> I've numerous customers I can think of straight away who 
> use setups such a MS Exchange on dynamic addresses where 
> they poll POP3 boxes and send their own SMTP!

POP XMIT; SUBMIT [even MS products support it]. Use TLS if 
you care that your customers are sharing their passwords 
in the clear.  Anyway, postmaster@aol might be more 
interested in your concerns. Then again, they set the rules
for their network, so they might not.

Cheers,

Joe

-- 
             RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE