But I tried 'telnet smtp.aol.com 25' and 'telnet my-employer 25' and saw somthing very odd. The connect message is:
220 smtp-los01.proxy.aol.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.11/8.12.11; Fri, 11
Mar
2005 02:53:43 -0500
for any host I connect to, with the los01 number maybe changing. Somehow I get redirected to AOL whenever I use port 25. Does this
ring a
bell with anyone? [Recall..I can send email from evolution]
If I go a dns lookup this is not the expected route.
This is because you are using an AOL dialup. As an anti-spam measure, AOL redirects all outbound SMTP connections from their customers
through
AOL's mail servers. This enables them to apply rate limits, quickly identify spammers/trojanned windows boxes etc. One of the results of this is that AOL, despite having on average a very technically- challenged customer base, emits a remarkably spall amount of spam compared with the likes of comcast, verizon, roadrunner etc.
Paul.
Thanks Paul and Ian, There are still two things that don't makes sense: *) I use evolution to sendmail to my work authorised smtp server. This works. But when I 'telnet my-work-server 25' I get diverted. If evolution has a way round the port 25 redirect, maybe sendmail can use it?
A couple of questions:
1. Are you connecting to your work authorised smtp server on port 25, or are you using another port, such as 587?
2. Are you sure that you're actually connecting to the server you think you're connecting to? Send yourself an email via this server and look at the Received: headers. Are you actually going through the work authorised smtp server, or are you using the AOL proxy?
*) My authorisation credentials are still failing if I try to use AOLs server. Maybe this is because I don't really get there? Should I try oto reference smtp-los02.proxy.aol.com or smtp.aol.com in authinfo do you think?
You shouldn't be using your "work" auth info when talking to the AOL server. If you have "AOL" auth info, you should be using that. You probably don't need any at all. What you *really* need is to be using a valid From: address, as I believe that's what the underlying problem is.
Paul.
