On Sun, 2002-12-08 at 18:17, Patrick Starrenburg wrote:
>
> There are many instances where home (dynamic IP) mail servers are badly setup
> and *just waiting* to be abused by spammers. Conversely I can think of some
> 'home' mail servers which are better run than a number of commercial
> 'professional' mail systems - well at least run by more knowledgeable persons!
>
There is, unfortunately, no way at all to tell if a particular dynamic
IP has a well configured debian machine or an unpatched win NT machine
on it at any given time.
Plus most ISPs with dynamic IPs (esp broadband ISPs) have a "no servers"
AUP - but that is a mere technicality.
> Personally I would not have any problems with sending all my outgoing mail
> through my (home) ISP's mail server. However, as someone else said on a
> separate thread with similar discussion, that would presuppose that my ISP
That presupposes you cannot find someone more clueful than your ISP (if
the ISP is clueless about mail) to provide SMTP AUTH. It is trivial to
configure Exim to AUTH as a client to a smarthost (see my headers).
> questions like this. After all, if a number of RBL type sites can manage to
> scan networks querying for open SMTP servers (I see them in logs all the time)
> then why can't/won't the ISP's....
I happen to know that most cable ISPs (such as roadrunner, stateside) do
carry out periodic sweeps of their network.
> Of course all of the above relates to 'semi-static' IP's such as cable or DSL
> (my address has not changed for > 1 year but then my box is never turned off,
> it is a mail server after all!) as for dial-up I would agree fully with Suresh.
More than likely the DHCP assigned IP is bound to something like your
ethernet card's MAC address.
srs
