Re: smtp questions

On Thu, 4 Mar 2004, DENNIS BYRNE wrote:

> That makes sense because "the conneting IP is in the same domain" for
> this example. I forced asdcb1@uaa.alaska.edu as the from address on
> the email, and the machine I'm developing on is on the uaa network.
> Maybe I'd be rejected if had forced asdcb1@NOTuaa.alaska.edu as the
> from address.
> OK, some more questions. Although it's imopssible to tell unless we
> had access to the email servers of uaa, yahoo and design-pt.com, why do
> they behave differently? Is this behavior built in or configured so?
> does the email server have it's own internal dns client? ... yes, I
> know it varies from server to server.

The vast majority of behavior differences are going to be configured.
SMTP is a standard which defines an application protocol, so up to a
limited point all SMTP implementations are going to act the same (or
should--I'm ignoring the crappy ones that violate the RFCs for sake of
argument). Beyond that, there are minor differences in most MTAs, but
nothing of earth-shattering proportions.

However, you can still customize mail server behavior to a huge degree and
still remain compliant with the RFCs. A good example of this is the
message I posted a couple days ago about trying to get a Postfix server to
reject mail containing mime attachments with executable extensions.
Another example is the use of RBLs to reject mail from known spammers and
open relays.

Mike
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Received on Fri Mar 5 09:17:35 2004