Webone blocking port 25??

[Rasjid Wilcox]

On Thu, 25 Jul 2002 12:49 pm, Conrad Canterford wrote:
> Unless this has changed fairly recently, they weren't blocking it to us.

Hmm... my experience suggests that it changed yesterday.

The response from Webone was:
> > It has been a condition of the plan you are on
> > that port 25 is blocked to prevent domestic customers from being used as
> > an open relay for a long time. This has recently been implemented. 

To be fair to Webone, their AUP says -
You must NOT carry out any actions which:
#  run programs on the WebOne Network which are intended to open sockets or 
ports and keep them open waiting for data

So they are in fact within their rights to block incoming access to port 25.  
That does not mean I'm pleased about it.

The (roughly) equivalent line in Netspeed's AUP is:
7.4 Personal dial-up unlimited accounts are for the unlimited usage of ONE 
person only, with reasonable unlimited use. Reasonable unlimited use is 
defined as one person sitting at a computer using the service, and does NOT 
include leaving systems idle for excessive periods of time, leaving systems 
online for others' use as file servers, etc.

> I'm not sure if that just means we're on some different arrangement
> somehow. Certainly we still receive email inbound through our own mail
> server, or I wouldn't be receiving any emails. We used to be able to
> send outbound directly too, but I recently changed my mail server
> configuration to forward through their mail server.

Actually, it is *not* outbound mail that has been the problem.  It would not 
bother me overly to have to relay out via their SMTP server (although I'd 
rather not have to).

> Unlike some other ISP's in town, Webone are competent and appear
> sensible about these things.

On the whole, I *do* like Webone, and have always found their staff both 
sensible and competent.  They are offering dymanic SMTP for $60pa.

The question at this point is just how much extra am I willing to spend on 
Webone beyond what I might pay to Netspeed (for example).

Based on the AUP of both Webone and Netspeed, it seems clear to me at this 
point that if I want to host my own website / mailserver etc, even for very 
low traffic non-commercial use, *and* I want to be sure that my ISP wont 
suddenly render my server ineffective, I probably need to get on a business 
plan. I'm not happy about it, but that seems to be the reality to me.

I plan to shop around - unfortunately Webone's business plans seem to be the 
most expensive at the moment, unless I take their 500MB plan, which without a 
free (or low cost) download area, is just not quite enough.

Rasjid.