Not at all. I just think that Len is starting to make things personal
I made nothing personal. Disagree with my POV, but nothing's personal.
I was trying to advise Len to stop accusing others of having inferior providers, configurations, knowledge and capabilities.
Accuse? Stating the fact that providers, configs, knowledge and capabilities vary is an "accusation", that there is some crime or culpability? GMAFB
We are all here to learn from one another and to improve the overall operation of our mail servers.
Over the last 6 years, I've "taught" as much as anybody here.
I think this discussion has caused a lot of emotions to surface and I'm guilty of it too. I would propose that we step back and remove the emotions from our posts and discuss the problem.
put on some thicker skin, and don't find what's not there.
=========================== Now, back to the situation we have been discussing.
It seems to me that the crux of the problem is AOL attempting to change to defacto standard by requiring specific rDNS entries
their "right", they're right, and the sooner the de facto is established, the better for every IMail admin everywhere and all of Internet.
Just imagine: after AOL's de facto requiring a PTR is established, you will be able to block all spam from IPs with no PTR. Do you have any idea how much that is for your server?
and refusing to accept mail from a segment of the market that have rDNS entries composed of certain elements, namely "DSL".
It's happily much broader than that, yea!, it's for reverse zones whose IPs are dynamically assigned. dial-up, cable, dsl.
1. This frustrates the people getting closed off because the problem cannot be solved by them.
There's a war on. Don't stand where the bombs are falling.
In this case, the mail server admin must convince someone else (the ISP) to do something. Not always an easy task!
Exactly. Being in a netblock known as dynamic is a negative credential. If you want that changed to a positive credential, you have to ask. From AOL's POV, they are justified in blocking dynamic nets because they are huge sources of abuse mail (and btw, that are not policed for abuse by the network operators). Mail servers on static IPs have more cred and escape the blocking.
2. This goes against what most of us believe as "presumed innocent until proven guilty".
yep. Dynamic networks are guilty, IPs without PTR are guilty, for AOL (and all of us) of massive mail abuse.
Many innocent mail admins are being caught in this "filter" and are feeling falsely accused of a hideous crime.:) AOL doesn't seem to care about this false positive effect of their filtering.
Their filter is probably 99.99% accurate, in the volumes of abuse mail blocked vs legit mail blocked. Just like every MX admin who does blocking, they prefer efficiency of the broad block, and then deal with acceptably tiney false positives. They've "had it up to here" with abuse from dynamic nets and with ISPs and access providers who won't shut down spammers on their networks. They also know that number of legit mailservers in dynamic net blocks are a minuscule source of legit mail. They also know that those mailservers can relay their outbound through the IP provider's gateway, like all other dynamic users do.
3. AOL is so large that many people believe they must know best.
AOL knows best for themselves. People can believe anything they want.
When a small hosting company can't get email to AOL, then the small company must not know what they are doing.
Whoa, where did AOL, or anybody, say that?
This potentially impacts revenue streams which are the lifeblood of any company. Worse yet, those users might move service to AOL which adds insult to injury.
relay your outbound through your ISP, and move on.
4. AOL is so large that it now has the power to unilaterally dictate internet policy.
It's the policy for their MXs, nobody else's. Do you set the policies for your mailserver? Why can't AOL set the policies for theirs?
AOL doesn't have to change the RFC, it just has to implement the policy and "spin" it correctly to succeed.
no spin required. They know how much abuse comes from the netblocks they are blocking.
btw, AOL has the largest subscriber base, but you will have hard time convincing a court they have monopoly power in Internet access/mail provider. Anyway, enforcement of monopoly laws is highly politicized and you know, just from the MS case, which side shrub + posse takes, always preferring business over consumer.
Make no mistake that AOLs goal is to put us out of business and absorb the customer base.
It's more probable they are groaning from, and spending many $Millions on, mail abuse. And they know that tons of it comes from certain classes of networks.
Len
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