Tim: >> I'd ditch the notion of using an ISP's crappy mail system when you >> can easily use a much better server, elsewhere. Gene Heskett: > Yeah, I'm seeing hour plus outages here. And you can't tell whats > going on cuz they have the ping response and traceroute responders > disabled, security ya know. vz, being in bed with M$, has to do all > that. Dumb... To be honest, pinging is a less than adequate test. It only tests one aspect of networking. It certainly doesn't test anything to do with a mail server (the server software, that part that actually relates to "mail" serving). I wouldn't be all that surprised if they'd turned off too much (like the hapless users who'll foolishly block *all* ICMP traffic). > Ask an email related question on the tech support line (now there is > an oxymoron for you, "tech support") and mention kmail, then you have > to tell them its linux & they say "whazzat, we don't support anything > but winderz and macs." About that time I get pi$$y and point out that > a std protocol is a std protocol. And that they aren't following it. For larger ISPs, I recommend lying. Pretend you're using Outlook. The usual webmonkeys can't access logs (they just read a prepared script at you, or make a fault log entry for someone else to fix) or wouldn't know how to interpret them. I prefer the smaller ISPs, ones that own themselves. You've more chance of actually talking to a tech that maintains their gear. And even more chance that they use Linux, either because they're an enthusiast or they use Linux servers. I find it amusing that it seems the smaller ISPs *need* less technical support staff. I can only imagine it's because they actually keep their gear working. ;-) -- (This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
