From: Stuart D. Gathman
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 2:50 PM
<...>
There really is no reason
these days to have an email of foo(_at_)earthlink(_dot_)net, when you can
have foo(_at_)vanitydomain(_dot_)org for a few bucks more - and you don't
even have to run a server:
$8/yr domain registration
$5/yr DNS servers E.g.: www.dnsmadeeasy.com
$10/yr pop/imap mailboxes E.g.: www.dnsmadeeasy.com
Run your own Linux server and use backup to avoid quotas on mailboxes.
You can only run your own server if you have port 25 incoming available.
Many people don't and even fewer will in the future. But your point is well
taken, and it is even cheaper than you show above. I recently bought some
POP/IMAP mailboxes from DNS Made Easy and they were only $5/yr. Their
incoming MX even does SPF checks.
Another positive bit of news on the hosting front is that Interland, a major
U.S. hosting provider, has finally rolled out SMTP AUTH over port 587.
Though this is trivial to administer, most U.S. ISP's have resisted this
basic anti-forgery method. This allows a domain who hosts there to submit
all their mail through one MSA, no matter where they are traveling, and the
return-path will be their real domain. This simplifies the required SPF
records as there is no more "traveling salesman" problem. As they host over
a million domains, this is significant. While they don't yet support TXT
records in their DNS control panel, I spoke to a sysadmin there who said
they are working on it due to the "large number of requests they've had for
SPF". The problem is not with their DNS itself, but with their homegrown
database that feeds it. They are replacing the database system, which is a
major effort.
--
Seth Goodman