Yes, I can connect to every other SMTP server I've tried to connect to from home (even AOL's if you can believe that).
I can definitely believe that you can reach AOLs mailserver -- the problem is with Hotmail, they have something misconfigured. If they don't want your mail, they should return a 5xx response in the SMTP greeting.
Blocking IPs without sending a 5xx response is a last resort, and typically used when the party sending the E-mail refuses to stop trying to send it, even if they get a 5xx response.
They could be blocking based on a reverse lookup, but they'd have some serious problems with a lot of email servers that do not even have reverse DNS set up (even though, yes, I know they should).
The point here is that they could be blocking based on reverse DNS entries that *look* funny to them (IE "personalaccount001.example.com"). No major mailservers will refuse mail based solely on the lack of a reverse DNS entry (AOL does count it though in their secret filtering system).
They must be blocking blocks of IPs.
Unlikely -- causing 100K of traffic to block a single 2K E-mail is plain dumb.
But there doesn't seem to be a better explanation at this point.
-Scott
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