Re: [Sheflug] Domain registration companies

[nospam [at] alexhudson.com]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 03:30:00PM -0000, French, Alastair wrote:
> 	I will be getting a dynamic IP, which is why I want a secondary mail
> host to catch mail when (if) I am not connected or when I am forced to
> change IP's. From all accounts this is not very often. The supplier will be
> Blueyonder.

Hmmm. Right, where do I start... I hate to sound like a damp squib, but...

Firstly, let's overlook the fact you want to break your T&Cs (bleuyonder do not allow you to run 'internet services' on your PC), and the fact you're not supposed to do anything permanent with the IPs they assign you, and the fact that they reserve the right to limit your usage :) Blueyonder is not designed for running servers on. 

> > Also - what do you mean by 'hoster accepting domain as secondary MX
> > entry'? Do you mean you want to do something like:
> > 	@ IN MX 100 mycomputer.myhouse.
> > 	@ IN MX 110 mail.myisp.
> 
> > I don't know of anyone who will do that for you, I would imagine it's
> > actually quite hard to setup. 
> 	A mate of mine is doing it with NTL and the publicdns
> (granitecanyon) but they have had a few major probs recently and I am a bit
> warey of them.

It depends very much on the setup of your mail at the ISP though. If they drop your virtual domain to one email box, you'll be okay, if they setup a mailbox for every address on your domain, you probably won't be. 

> > The better options are to either (a) maildrop off the ISP mail server
> > [preferred]
> 	The intention is to be running majordomo for a another domain as
> well (very low traffic) so I'd rather have it direct

Are your majordomo users really going to mind having a five-minute lag (being nice to the mail server) on their list mail? I've seen mail spool locally for longer than that. You're also assuming that your dynamic IP is not going to be in the dial-up rbls that exist - a lot of mail servers are setup to refuse to accept mail from mail servers on non-static ips. I don't know what the case is with BlueYonder, but certainly I would think it would be possible that your IP would come under that. 

Think very hard before hosting your own mail servers. ISPs do hosting for a reason - it's a lot easier for them, and they're very good at it. The only reason people generally think they can do it better is because you're a lot more forgiving of yourself than your ISP. Get one user on your majordomo list to complain, as you would to your ISP, every time something goes wrong with it :) It might open your eyes :))

Don't let me put you off or anything though :)

Cheers,

Alex.
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