Peter Bowyer <peeebeee@???> said, in message
56152ae905090207116684f841@???:
> On 02/09/05, Adam Funk <adam00f@???> wrote:
> >>
> > I believe that if this works it will be beneficial to all
> > residential internet users.
>
> Including those who don't care, and if your action is successful, will
> end up paying for the premium level of service anyway? What SLA are
> you going to insist on the ISP providing across its probable 7-figure
> user base?
>
> There are well-documented aternatives for those who insist on the
> right to do direct delivery of email from a server in their kitchen -
> most of which involve those people spending a small amount of money to
> procure the service they need.
>
> It's called choice - which you're proposing to reduce.
>
> Peter
I'm not sure that's fair (or maybe I'm missing the point). If you've
bought a service from an ISP who provides smarthosts, is it too much
to ask that they treat the smarthost as part of the service? I can't
see how it reduces choice to ask people to support the services they're
offering. His ISP has no obligation to provide the mail service at all,
but if they are, they should probably be obliged to make it reliable?
He's not asking for his right to send mail directly from a server in his
kitchen. All he's after is the ability to have a reasonable degree of
certainty that when he submits mail to his ISP's smarthost it'll be
delivered in a timely fashion! What the ISP seems to be saying is that
they don't want to be responsible for any of the services they're
providing (other than packet routing), and that sounds unreasonable
to me.
I dunno... I'm with Wanadoo and, so far as I can tell, their outbound
mail service is reliable. I accept inbound SMTP on my ADSL line (because
I'm a geek and want to do cute stuff with my mail) and I forward outbound
mail through their smarthosts. If it turned out that their smarthosts were
dropping or vastly delaying mail, I'd complain to them. If they responded
that mail wasn't part of their service then I'd be looking for a new ISP
that *did* treat their smarthosts as part of what I'm paying for.
Adam seems to be rather braver than me and willing to test whether
their attitude is reasonable, by complaining higher up. It sounds
like a worthwhile test to me, whatever the result.
Cheers,
Alun.
--
Alun Jones auj@???
Systems Support, (01970) 62 2494
Information Services,
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
