RE: NEVER USE SORBS
Hey Craig
I think the business-ADSL space is changing a lot and expectations are
rising for what can be achieved with a business ADSL line.
I rent a business level ADSL line here in Italy because it's convenient
for me especially because competition has lowered prices to the point
where for example 6 Mbit ADSL with no upload/download limits (which on
the contrary is common back home in Australia) costs of the order of 50
AUD a month flat. I got the business level ADSL instead of the consumer
level ADSL precisely because it offered a static IP address, that indeed
has not changed in all the years that I have had the service, regardless
of reboots. But, importantly, it is assigned by DHCP, presumably for
the convenience of the customer in not having to be a master at
configuring their network equipment, just simply plug in and follow the
standard instructions on the consumer-level ADSL modem. The ADSL
connection is of a high quality by what I can judge: it often remains
connected for months at a time, until usually I bring it down by
restarting something, not the ISP.
Having that sort of convenience means that I can put all sorts of
machines and servers behind NAT and being a software developer I
actually do do so.
Now the ISP I use is one of the biggest European-wide ISP's, and I am
pretty certain that for me it would be very difficult bureaucratically
to get them to do anything like configure an rDNS or raise or lower
TTL's and so on. So, I haven't tried. And my servers and SSH and VPN
connections work fine.
Except for mail.
I haven't set up a mail server simply because I am terrified of the pain
I would go through judging by what I read on this group. Now being an
old (literally) software engineer who is reasonably competent in many
things computer-wise after 30 years of studying compsci and then working
with all manner of hardware and software, I would actually like to
eventually set up my own mail server. And I would like to do it without
coordinating with my ISP because of all the pain I would go through. I
would like to do it with the same competence that I've set up my (not
public so far) web server and my firewall, and every other thing I've
had to go through in learning about connecting server equipment to the
internet.
But you're saying that the one type of server I shouldn't connect is a
mail server? Because I couldn't cope? I don't think that's reasonable.
I understand that you may not want to accept mail directly from me
because of arbitrary rules like you wouldn't accept mail from someone
born in Australia but living in Italy, but I don't think it is
reasonable for all the mail admins in the world to not accept my mail
because it is assigned from a pool of addresses for all I know may be
designated somewhere as being dynamic (my bet is that they are: what
does 217-133-15-nnn.b2b.tiscali.it say as an IP address to you?).
I for one would like to know how to become professionally competent in
mail server administration, slowly, at my own pace, gradually
introducing more and more complexity as time goes on, just as I did with
apache etc. I expect to be capable of doing this judging by other
things I have learnt in the past. I may make mistakes, I may not
designate some header fields correctly in my first attempts, but I would
hate to be banned from trying simply because I was blacklisted by SORBS.
But I certainly would never send SPAM, I am too professional and careful
for that. In fact, I would argue that learning at my own pace on my
ADSL would be far preferable than learning in the sysadmin group of some
organisation with a network connection that is truly static.
But you're saying that even if I succeed in becoming a competent mail
admin, I shouldn't join the peer-to-peer world of mail servers simply
because I have this IP address? And if my netblock (because of some
other IP address in it generating spam) gets blacklisted by SORBS I can
say bye-bye to sending mail because of the difficuly I would have in
getting my ISP to change anything? [In fact, by the way, I think that
this netblock is on some blacklist somewhere, because a lot of my mail
sent via the ISP's SMTP server smtp.tiscalinet.it (like this posting)
doesn't arrive at the destination in Australia (it only happens with
Australia and AOL, is that because SORBS is there?), it just ends up in
a black hole because I don't get anything in return either.]
Peter K.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Klavins Datalon SrL
klavins@netspace.net.au Viale Giuseppe Mazzini 114/A
Mobile +39 339 801 4246 Fax +39 06 233 297 037 00195 Roma RM Italy
-----Original Message-----
From: CaT [mailto:cat@zip.com.au]
Sent: Thursday, 27 July 2006 2:11 PM
To: Craig Sanders
Cc: debian-isp@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: NEVER USE SORBS
On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 07:38:14PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 04:00:15PM +1000, CaT wrote:
> > On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 03:33:13PM +1000, Craig Sanders wrote:
> > > well then, you finally figured out how to get mail working correctly
> > > from a dynamic IP address - use a smarthost. preferably one under your
> > > own control.
> >
> > Wow. And here I thought an IP address was an IP address, each as capable
> > as the other of being an IP address.
>
> just shows how wrong you can be, doesnt it?
Please feel free to kill the attitude at any time. If you have something
to say, say it without the spittle.
> the fact that it is technically possible to run a mail server on a
> dynamic ip address doesnt mean that it is practical to do so. even
Depends on the purpose you're going to put it to.
> aside from DULs making it difficult to send mail directly with any
> reliability, it is actually impossible to reliably receive mail via smtp
I think you're confusing dynamic IPs with your desire to deny people
behind them the ability to send mail out of servers running behind them.
There is nothing about a dynamic IP that makes outgoing mail unreliable,
the peculiar attitude of some people aside.
> direct to a dynamic IP - dynamic dns just doesnt cut it for MX records
That's neither here nor there and not at all relevant.
> similarly, you cant reliably run a web server or any other kind of
> server on a dynamic IP address.
This too is neither here nor there and not at all relevant (nor 100%
accurate).
> something that only works sometimes may be acceptable for a home user
> that doesnt reaaly care that much, but they should just accept the fact
> that they're only paying for a "best effort" level of service and quit
> whinging about the fact that nobody cares any more than they do (and
> probably considerably less).
Nobody? I think you're giving your personal opinion more weight then it
may necessarily have.
--
"To the extent that we overreact, we proffer the terrorists the
greatest tribute."
- High Court Judge Michael Kirby
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