Re: Wild card MXes

John R Levine wrote:
> > I also disagree with the assertion that clients on dsl/cable modems
> > should not be sending direct email.  What they should not being doing
> > is sending direct email as bigisp.com (subject to the policy of the
> > ISP).
> That depends both on the policy of the ISP and whether it's a static or
> DHCP address.  I don't think you'll find much support for direct sending
> from DHCP addresses any more.
John, I disagree with your claim, and agree with Andy's. If the big 10 ISPs 
decided together that DHCP/PPP dynamic address should not send mail 
directly, they could block port 25 outgoing at the edge, only allowing 
connections to their own servers. On the other hand, they have no way, 
currently, to control the use of their domain by hosts in their IP space. We 
can provide that.
I run a mail server on exactly such a connection. All of the HELO and MAIL 
FROM lines use my domain, not my ISP's. I am currently forced to route my 
outgoing mail through my provider's smarthost because one major provider 
doesn't accept mail from DHCP hosts. Unfortunately, that means that my 
outbound mail to many other domains is rejected every time said smarthost 
gets on a widely-used blacklist. Unless I were to set up transport routing 
through the smarthost for that one provider, and direct for everywhere else, 
I get rejected messages either way. And telling me to pay a separate email 
provider is not a serious response, unless you happen to be in the email 
provider business.
Bottom line is that I need some way to authenticate my server as my domain, 
to allow some measure of accountability and the ability to build reputation, 
in whatever form. If my ISP is somewhat off the hook for my server's 
actions, they would quite likely not see a need to go further in blocking 
outbound connections to protect their own reputation.
Philip Miller