Google Fiber Server 'Neutrality Violation' Being Overblown → But...

I'd like to point out that your favorite whipping boy of an ISP lets me hosts servers including Mail (without any smarthosts) on my residential connection.

Other than that one footnote I could care less. If I had the chance to have Google Fiber I'd run whatever I could get away with and only be slightly miffed if they did A) Deep packet inspection, B) Active Finger printing.

The piece clearly notes that even bigger, nastier ISPs with mean streaks (like AT&T) include the language but don't enforce it. I doubt Google planned to, either. It's there as a failsafe for extremely abusive customers.

How are you hosting a mail server without setting up PTR records? I don't know of any ISP that will let you change the reverse DNS lookup for a residential IP.

You don't need reverse DNS for mail to work. We don't have it at work and we send hundreds of emails per day without issues.

If you're hosting that mail server on a residential connection with no RDNS, chances are that a goodly portion of your mail is going right into spam folders. Many RBLs treat any mail coming from known DSL or cable IP ranges as being sent by known spammers by default.

We are on a business DSL connection, but the ranges are different from residential. I was merely pointing out that reverse DNS wasn't necessary.

even if they did DPI, you can get around it by tunneling all of your traffic through a server in a data center.

I get a good mix of sent to spam and not. I don't do any high volume, so once I send a message if a friend doesn't get it I tell them to check the spam, they hit allow once and I'm good.

Most times however I don't have an issue using it.

Is the article correct is the question.
The last TOS I can remember signing had no such provisions. Also port 25 is blocked outbound on residential connections, you must request (and now pay I believe) to have it removed. AT&T knows that I am running an email server on my residential connection and they don't care.

Just noting that there are exceptions. Besides what good is symmetrical 1Gbps connection if you can't roll your own?

Keep in mind the word "server" isn't always used, but there's nearly always language in there prohibiting either commercial usage of the line, excessive consumption, or both. There's also often various agreements users have to click through, from the AUP to the general TOS, to the privacy policy. Some language to this effect is there for nearly every ISP to give them a legal leg to stand on when they force somebody trying to run a business on a 6 Mbps DSL line toward a business-grade connection.

Most mail servers will check for forward/reverse DNS pairings. I would highly recommend that you run your mail server with them, doing so is irresponsible:

»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An ··· S_checks

Actually, my residential ISP, Cavalier Telephone, set up PTR records for my static IP. Not sure they still offer residential since they've been bought, but I'm grandfathered.

To receive mail, no. To send mail, almost certainly YES. And depending on how restrictive (read: paranoid) the receiver is, your "in a dialup dynamic residential pool" address may be banned.

More to the point, AOL and my domain mail servers categorically reject email from addresses which have no PTR record. I don't even care if the forward and reverse lookups don't match; virtually any respectable operation will put at least SOMETHING there for a PTR record. Too much spam eminates from addresses where this isn't the case that I rarely make an exception for this. (Although there are around 30 in an exception table I had to create.) I 4xx any such attempts, and only add an exception if I can verifiably determine whether I want email from you.

Without a smarthost? I ran a mail server on an AT&T dynamic residential account since it was called, "SBC". I even had them remove the outbound port 25 block. Alas, AOL was just one of several services denying access; I had to use a smarthost for sending. Here is a log from an attempt to an AOL account:

20:38:36.670: --- Mon Mar 01 20:38:36 2004 ---
20:38:36.705: Connect to '205.188.158.25', timeout 60.
20:38:38.274: >> 554- (RTR:BB)  The IP address you are using to connect to AOL is a dynamic<cr><cr><lf>
20:38:38.310: >> 554- (residential) IP address.  AOL will not accept future e-mail transactions<cr><cr><lf>
20:38:38.347: >> 554- from this IP address until your ISP removes this IP address from its list<cr><cr><lf>
20:38:38.405: >> 554- of dynamic (residential) IP addresses.  For additional information,<cr><cr><lf>
20:38:38.445: >> 554  please visit http://postmaster.info.aol.com.<cr><cr><lf>
20:38:38.480: << EHLO aosake.net<cr><lf>
20:38:38.548: --- Connection closed normally at Mon Mar 01 20:38:38 2004. ---