Malcolm J McCallum wrote:
Hi everyone.
[..big Internet café sob story deleted..]
<grin>
Ok, so, the problem that Malcolm is really describing with his Internet
saga is that he is unable to send email. There are two ways of resolving
that, but I need to provide a little background first.
Sending email in an email program generates a request to a mail server
to send and email out to the person you wish to get the message to.
After the Green Card affair in the early '90s we got introduced to SPAM.
At that time you could generally connect to any mail server from
anywhere and send email to someone.
These days that is no longer the case.
The simplest way to reduce SPAM is to ensure that only known users are
allowed to use the email gateway. From an ISP perspective the easiest
way to achieve that is to only allow people who connect to the Internet
from their service to use their email server.
When you're in an Internet café, you're most likely not connected to the
Internet via your normal ISP connection, thus you are prevented from
sending email using their server.
As I said, there are two ways of resolving that:
1. Find an email server that provides another way of authenticating you.
2. Bring your own email server along.
Option 1 means that you need to ask your ISP if they have a mail server
that you can connect to while roaming, and from memory, WestNet has one
of those [they do indeed, read on :-) ]
Option 2 means that you need to install a mail server, like exim,
postfix, sendmail or 20 other options.
You should note that Option 2 will at some times give you grief because
ISPs are now beginning to block email coming from anything other than
registered domains and mailing lists such as WAMUG use SPAM filters
which use blocking lists that block email from "known spammers" - I put
that in quotes, see below for why :-)
So, in this case and in most cases, it's simpler to get your ISP to
assist you with a means of authenticating yourself against their
mail-server, either using SSH, secure-SMTP or what ever scheme they've
dreamt up.
Finally, I shall even provide you with some links:
* http://www.google.com/search?q=westnet+roaming+mailserver&safe=off
* http://www.westnet.com.au/support/setup/
Which state that:
* * **Roaming Mail Server* (for use when not connected to WestNet)
* Mail/POP3/SMTP/POST/Incoming and Outgoing
* Mail server: mailr.westnet.com.au
* Username: Full email address
* Password: Email address password
As for the "known spammers" - some block lists - like the one used by
WAMUG will also block infected computers, even if they are on a
corporate network that affects a whole country, so users like me will
have their mail blocked because some other user on the network has an
infected PC and the network operator has no mechanism to separate out
legitimate actual email, from a user like me who runs their own server
and from an infected machine that sends out many megabytes of SPAM. So
in the past I used option 2, and now I use both option 2 and 1, in that
my mail server sends the mail to the Optus mail server.
So, there you have it.
Cheers,
--
Onno Benschop
Connected via Optus B3 at S25°34'41" - E152°35'34" (Graham's Creek, QLD)
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