New Saix Smtp Policy

[James]

I'm running a Linux box with G o D a d dy .com for just this reason.

At US$35 you can't afford to waste Telkom's bandwidth.

This does look like a great option, thanks

 

[Karnaugh]

Which do you think is the best option?

Many places who offer email hosting also offer authenticated SMTP relay (we do! PM me). Don't tell me you can't afford R20 or so a month for an SMTP relay if you are sending over 250 mails an hour.

 

[Valerion]

Many places who offer email hosting also offer authenticated SMTP relay (we do! PM me). Don't tell me you can't afford R20 or so a month for an SMTP relay if you are sending over 250 mails an hour.

Yes, true, I agree that is also a very good solution - probably the best you can find. It's just sad that to use Telkom's ADSL to its full capacity you have to pay

1) Telkom for line rental
2) An ISP for net access (I refuse to use Telkom Internet)
3) A 3rd-party VPN provider to give you decent speed / latency on said net access (if you want to do anything but browse the web)
4) A 3rd-party provider to allow you to send occasional high-volume email unimpeded

I was trying to come up with a solution that means I don't have to pay YET ANOTHER content / bandwidth provider ... ease of bill management and all that.

*sighs*

On the positive side, Telkom's strategy did mean a few new businesses make profit, providing additional services Telkom refuse to give.

 

[Karnaugh]

Well, under any circumstance I would never encourage anyone to become reliant on their ISP's email address, especialy for business purposes.

 

[Valerion]

Well, under any circumstance I would never encourage anyone to become reliant on their ISP's email address, especialy for business purposes.

I agree completely. If you're strapped for cash, register yourself a .co.za or .com or similar domain, put down a low-end box (even a lowly Pentium will do), put Linux on it with sendmail/postfix and relay your domain outwards.

Nice and personalized for your company, looks professional (much more professional than [email protected]), and if you change ISPs, you get to keep your address. And you can create as many mailboxes as your mail server can allocate.

 

[rainynight65]

Off Topic

Lots of people. A lot of resellers point there mail server to that. For instance all Mweb ADSL users use smtp.mweb.co.za which is really a CName to smtp.saix.net (before someone tries to prove me wrong, Mweb checks the requesting IP and if it is an ADSL user gives them that. Non ADSL users checking smtp.mweb.co.za will get something else).

Easier way to find out. On the Windows command line, do

nslookup smtp.mweb.co.za

The result will look like this:

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: smtp.mweb.co.za
Address: 196.25.240.94

Then do the same with the IP you got:

nslookup 196.25.240.94

This is called reverse lookup. A reverse lookup will always return the actual name, not the aliases. And the result is:

Name: smtp.saix.net
Address: 196.25.240.94

If I know my ABCs about DNS, there is no way to give people different results based on their IP address. That would annihilate the usability of the DNS system anyway. One IP can have many aliases, but only one designated host name, which is the one returned by a reverse lookup.

Regards, Alex

 

[DFantom]

If I know my ABCs about DNS, there is no way to give people different results based on their IP address. That would annihilate the usability of the DNS system anyway. One IP can have many aliases, but only one designated host name, which is the one returned by a reverse lookup.

Look at Bind DNS server from version 8 and above, built in feature named views designed to do exactly that. Before that you could do it with multiple bind installations but it was a pain.

 

[rainynight65]

Look at Bind DNS server from version 8 and above, built in feature named views designed to do exactly that. Before that you could do it with multiple bind installations but it was a pain.

Alright, I didn't know that feature yet. It's not exactly the first thing you think about when setting up a DNS server

Alex

 

[Karnaugh]

Why is it impossible? Ok, maybe to do it globaly for the rest of the internet, but you can do it for your own customers

colin@jupiter:~$ host smtp.mweb.co.za
smtp.mweb.co.za A 196.25.240.94
colin@jupiter:~$ host 196.25.240.94
Name: rofl.hai2u.lo.lz
Address: 196.25.240.94