OT: Mail servers changes (INFO)

On Feb 24, 21:15, Eric Smith wrote: My ISP runs two SMTP mail servers, one open, the other not; for a very good reason. A large number of customers travel across Europe, and it is not practical for them to always dial the ISP at international rates. Hence, there are a number of agreements between several ISPs in several European countries, which allow customers registered with one ISP to use the points-of-presence of another. However, the roaming user typically wants to keep his normal email address (ie, have mail appear to originate from his normal address). To do so, he must either use his "home" server despite his temporary IP address/hostname not matching that server's domain (which would look like an attempted forgery to a spam-blocking server) or must use the "local" server and forge the sender address (which would also fail on any normal spam-blocking server). This practice is quite widespread in Europe. Jay's use of MAPS doesn't bother me, because I can (almost) always use the blocking server, and I expect that for most roaming users the inconvenience is minimal. However, until there's a sensible system to deal with roaming users' need to send mail as well as receive it, there will be open relays. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Dept. of Computer Science University of York