[BlueOnyx:04406] Re: sending on port 2525...

[Michael Aronoff]

Webmaster at oldcabin.net wrote:
> I am still convinced that this is just an attempt by the "big guys" 
> to shut down us "little guys" since it is so.. darn easy to use 
> another port to get around their block.

It is not an attempt at any such thing.

They could care less if you want to use another port to access another
server you "should" be using to send email from.  What they want to reduce
is spambots. Infected machines that are configured to act as their own
mailservers and sending out tons of spam. Blocking standard email ports
allows them to do that and as you said it is east for a legitimate sysadmin
to setup a custom port for their users.

I use portfwd as a daemon on all my servers to listen on a non-standard port
and redirect the traffic to port 25.  It is lightweight, takes almost no
memory or resources and I never have to worry about a sendmail or firewall
change breaking it since it is standalone. I wrote a how to many eons ago
for the Raq550 and then the Argon and then BQ. Do a search on the Google for
Michael Aronoff Portfwd and you should find a few old copies. Ignore any
dentist links :) if not email me off list and I can send my current how-to
to anyone that wants it.

I tried to update for BX recently but since there is not a Dev-Tools package
anymore I could not get it to compile. It kept throwing errors. I gave up
and copied the compiled binary from a BQ server and then setup the configs
as in the how-to and it is working fine. If anyone figures out the compile
problem please let me know.

MAronoff Out