>>>>> ali (Anders Lindgren) writes:

>> imap for SENDING mails?

ali> I was under the impression it worked both ways, but I have never
ali> used it so I may well be wrong.

Since the original suggestion was to use IMAP to authenticate SMTP
relaying, maybe you were thinking of the following method?

You can use IMAP as a means to authenticate a user before he (or
really, his/her IP address), is allowed to relay mail via SMTP. The
idea is that users that have a valid IMAP account can be trusted, so
you can allow them to relay mail as much as they like. In NetBSD
pkgsrc you can find something called DRACD that dynamically adds
IMAP-authenticated IP addresses to a database when a user logs in via
IMAP. This database can then be used to allow relaying. I have used
this with imap-uw and postfix for a long time and it works just fine.

The advantage of this scheme is that it supports stupid Windows
mailers that cannot do real authenticated SMTP.

Regards,

        -- Urban