> > This is a feature, not a bug. The only reason for a dialup user to not use
> > your ISP's server for outgoing mail is if you want to evade limits placed
on
> > traffic there...

No, it's a bug.  I can't find anywhere in RFC821 an indication that
completely arbitrary criteria may be used to abandon a session.  I can find: 
 
  The SMTP provides mechanisms for the transmission of mail; directly
  from the sending user's host to the receiving user's host when the
  two host are connected to the same transport service

If the sender is speaking valid SMTP, and the receiver doesn't attempt to
deliver the message, then the receiver is broken.

Anyway, that's by the by...

> You don't know that. There are other, quite valid reasons.
> Simple example: your ISP is clueless and it's mail forwarder is simply not
> reliable, or does "something bad" (tm) to your mail while forwarding it.


Or, you live in another third world country that has just introduced
invasion of privacy laws that would make a military dictator blush, and you'd
rather have one less machine in the path which squirrels your mail away for
the police's enjoyment.

Or, perhaps less controversially, you use more than one ISP.  My machine is
set up to connect to a different ISP during 'peak rate' phone charges than
during 'off peak' phone charges, to be as cost effective as possible.  I'd
rather not have to rejig my MTA config twice a day...


The ISPs imosing limits argument is also bogus; if an ISP thinks it needs
to impose limits, it should read the RFCs and work out that there is no
reason why a customer would necessarily use their smarthost to deliver
mail.  If they still want to do it, then transparently redirecting port 25
traffic to their smarthost is trivial (at least one of my ISPs does it.)  If
they can set up a transparent web proxy they can do the same for SMTP.  If
they can't, they don't deserve to call themselves an ISP.

Cheers,
Tim.


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