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Spam domain filters virtually killed self-hosted e-mail and what I presume was their major use case.

by rcdmd 8y ago

twothamendment 8y ago
There were times I thought that I'd have to give up, but it is much better than it used to be. I've been running my own email since 2002. There were some rough years, but I think we are past the days where you'd try to send to someone at {{big company} and get rejected. It's been quite a few years since I've thought too much about being rejected or fighting spam. It is a pain to setup DKIM, SPF, etc., but it all works now. I had to say "etc.", mostly because I don't remember all the hoops I jumped through. THe good news is that it has been so long I don't remember.
- m-p-3 8y ago
  I guess this period was a necessary evil to improve the email acosystem and make everyone a bit more concerned to setup their system correctly (even though it's non-trivial)..
rhizome 8y ago
I've run my own email out of my closet for close to 20 years and have no problem sending. I think DKIM/SPF probably help a lot, but I really can't say, as I've never been blocked (to my knowledge).
- jlgaddis 8y ago
  Same here. We're a long ways from the days when your machine would come with sendmail running and accepting mail for your FQDN OOTB, though... so it's a little more difficult but certainly not out of reach of anyone who is willing to put into the time and effort to learn how to do it right. (I plan on moving my mail to a new machine (well. new VMs) over the next few days and I expect to run into nearly no issues doing so. Then again, like rhizome, I've been doing this for ~20 years.)
- walrus01 8y ago
  Assuming you have a clueful and attentive upstream ISP and a static /29 or something, running your own mail out of your closet with proper rDNS, spf and dkim probably has better chance of delivery success than the same software setup, but on a dedicated server sharing a /24 of IP space with clueless and occasionally abuse-generating neighboring customers in the same netblock.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    I have all that except for delegated reverse DNS, but that hasn't been a problem (again, to my knowledge!).
    - jlgaddis 8y ago
      You don't really need rDNS delegated to you (and I'm pretty sure that's not what walrus01 meant), just so long as you can set (or have your ISP set) the PTR RRs to match. Correctly set PTR RRs can (will) make a huge difference (lots of MTAs will reject if FCrDNS fails).
      - walrus01 8y ago
        Functionally from an smtp perspective it doesn't really matter if the rDNS is delegated to you, just that it's set correctly... ordinarily it's something you only have to set the PTR record for once, even if you need to manually ask your upstream to do it for the /32 that is your server, get them to set it to mail.whateverdomainname.net
walrus01 8y ago
IMHO if you do network engineering it's worth knowing the intricacies of modern SMTP setups. It is not that hard to build a wholly self hosted Postfix setup that has: Working reverse DNS SPF DKIM signing TLS1.2 transport to and from other smtpd, negotiated opportunistically. You can use a letsencrypt certificate. Is definitely not an open relay Requires TLS1.2 + SASL auth of your username and password to send outgoing mail (I use the same account credentials that are also my dovecot IMAPS account)

Spam domain filters virtually killed self-hosted e-mail and what I presume was their major use case.

by rcdmd 8y ago

Spam domain filters virtually killed self-hosted e-mail and what I presume was their major use case.

There were times I thought that I'd have to give up, but it is much better than it used to be. I've been running my own email since 2002. There were some rough years, but I think we are past the days where you'd try to send to someone at {{big company} and get rejected. It's been quite a few years since I've thought too much about being rejected or fighting spam. It is a pain to setup DKIM, SPF, etc., but it all works now. I had to say "etc.", mostly because I don't remember all the hoops I jumped through. THe good news is that it has been so long I don't remember.

m-p-3 8y ago
I guess this period was a necessary evil to improve the email acosystem and make everyone a bit more concerned to setup their system correctly (even though it's non-trivial)..

rhizome 8y ago

I've run my own email out of my closet for close to 20 years and have no problem sending. I think DKIM/SPF probably help a lot, but I really can't say, as I've never been blocked (to my knowledge).

jlgaddis 8y ago
Same here. We're a long ways from the days when your machine would come with sendmail running and accepting mail for your FQDN OOTB, though... so it's a little more difficult but certainly not out of reach of anyone who is willing to put into the time and effort to learn how to do it right. (I plan on moving my mail to a new machine (well. new VMs) over the next few days and I expect to run into nearly no issues doing so. Then again, like rhizome, I've been doing this for ~20 years.)
walrus01 8y ago
Assuming you have a clueful and attentive upstream ISP and a static /29 or something, running your own mail out of your closet with proper rDNS, spf and dkim probably has better chance of delivery success than the same software setup, but on a dedicated server sharing a /24 of IP space with clueless and occasionally abuse-generating neighboring customers in the same netblock.
- rhizome 8y ago
  I have all that except for delegated reverse DNS, but that hasn't been a problem (again, to my knowledge!).
  - jlgaddis 8y ago
    You don't really need rDNS delegated to you (and I'm pretty sure that's not what walrus01 meant), just so long as you can set (or have your ISP set) the PTR RRs to match. Correctly set PTR RRs can (will) make a huge difference (lots of MTAs will reject if FCrDNS fails).
    - walrus01 8y ago
      Functionally from an smtp perspective it doesn't really matter if the rDNS is delegated to you, just that it's set correctly... ordinarily it's something you only have to set the PTR record for once, even if you need to manually ask your upstream to do it for the /32 that is your server, get them to set it to mail.whateverdomainname.net

walrus01 8y ago

IMHO if you do network engineering it's worth knowing the intricacies of modern SMTP setups. It is not that hard to build a wholly self hosted Postfix setup that has: Working reverse DNS SPF DKIM signing TLS1.2 transport to and from other smtpd, negotiated opportunistically. You can use a letsencrypt certificate. Is definitely not an open relay Requires TLS1.2 + SASL auth of your username and password to send outgoing mail (I use the same account credentials that are also my dovecot IMAPS account)