Interesting People mailing list archives
more on Comcast blocking personal mail servers
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2006 19:08:27 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Ron Guerin <ron () vnetworx net> Date: April 9, 2006 7:03:35 PM EDT To: alberti () sanction net Cc: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on Comcast blocking personal mail servers Robert Alberti wrote:
From: Ron Guerin <ron () vnetworx net> You don't mention who your ISP is, however, if Comcast is under the impression you're on a residential IP address, odds are they got thisinformation from _your_ ISP, who is, in effect, telling Comcast to blockyour mail. Does your agreement with your ISP prohibit the running ofservers from your account? If so, you have your answer, which is that you're violating your agreement, and Comcast knows this because your ISP has published their residential IP addresses for the express purpose of allowing other ISPs to refuse mail coming from those addresses. If your service agreement does not prohibit the operation of servers, you still should investigate whether your ISP has published their residential IPspace for blocking purposes. Many, if not most residential blocking lists are based on self-published IP ranges.I have a static DSL IP from visi.com which permits the operation of servers on my account. I suspect although I do not know for sure (nor did the Visi technician to whom I spoke) that the fact that my reverseDNS name is "sanction.dsl.visi.com" that either the discrepancy betweenmy mailhost name "sanction.net" or the presence of 'dsl' in the string are triggering the rejection. I'm trying a reverse-DNS of 'sanction.net' to see if this fixes the problem.
That may well fix your problem. It all depends on the policy over at Comcast, which as you say, is in all probability, unpublished. I do know of some who attempt to dynamically block based on parsing the returned value of the reverse lookup, and indeed, it is considered a sign of both competence and intent to run a mail server by some mail service providers if you've had your reverse lookup changed to something not "generic" to the given ISP. As a last resort, you could try contacting Comcast for a whitelisting. Given that you are not prohibited from running servers, you certainly have grounds to protest your blocking.
I like Karl's solution of obtaining a block of IP addresses from Jon Postel, however the hereafter keeps rejecting my e-mail requests for a block of my own.
I wish we all had what Karl has. At least I wish *I* did. ;) - Ron ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as lists-ip () insecure org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- more on Comcast blocking personal mail servers David Farber (Apr 09)