OT: ?? Comcast blocked my port 25

[Lonni J Friedman]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 6:08 AM, Rick <rwbowers at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 3:14 AM, James McDonald <james at jamesmcdonald.id.au>
> wrote:
>>
>> Rick Bowers wrote:
>>>
>>> Do any of you have any words of wisdom? I plan to call Comcast, but would
>>> like to understand why blocking port 25 also affected my inbound messages
>>> and why only one account works. I'm guessing that a single account
>>> ID/password is being used. I use Eudora as my mail client.
>>>
>>>
>> If you want to get running again you may want to purchase a mail relay
>> service from someone link dyndns.com...
>>
>> They can receive and send email on many ports to allow you to get around
>> the comcast block.
>>
>> http://www.dyndns.com/services/mailhop/relay.html
>>
>> Of course moving to an ISP that isn't blocking those ports might help
>> also.
>>
>> Thanks, James. As a residential customer, I don't think I have many
>> choices for ISPs. The town selected Comcast for cable, I can use ISDN
>> perhaps. FIOS does not seem to be available here yet.  I don't know of any
>> other options.
>
> I'll look into the mail forward. But if I can't receive any mail currently,
> I'm not sure that will help. I understand why sending mail fails -- Comcast
> blocked the port -- but I still don't understand why receiving mail fails?
> Which port does the mail server (by default, since I have not changed
> anything) listen on?

This isn't making any sense.  Port 25 is historically used by the MTA
(Sendmail, etc) to *receive* email.  The port that your mail client
(Eudora, etc) uses to send mail from your system is 100% irrelevant,
unless its trying to connect to the your MTA which is only listening
on port 25.

I'm a bit concerned that you're running a mail server, yet you don't
even know which port it listens on. That sounds like a recipe for
disaster & abuse.  How do you know that your mail server wasn't
already being used for SPAM and other nefarious practices?   Quite
frankly I'm relieved that Comcast is preventing you continuing with
this practice if you're not educated enough to manage it.



-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
LlamaLand                       https://netllama.linux-sxs.org