November Poll

[banjo67xxx]

Even in China they have to use SMTP.  Mail doesn't get routed without it.  

You are technically correct. However, ChinaNetCom do not provide an SMTP service. I spent a long time talking to their customer support line with my wife translating for me, and also talked to several competent Chinese computer users, only to discover that everyone uses 163.com or hotmail via HTTP.

Nearly all well designed SMTP servers from ISP's will reject any outgoing email that doesn't originate from their own broadband or dialup connections. I've configured my own UK SMTP server to reject any outgoing email that doesn't originate from my internal LAN, and so as I havn't configured VPN on my LAN I can't use that from my laptop on China.

So, if I want to send email from my laptop in China using Thunderbird, then gmail offers a password authenticated SSL encrypted SMTP server, which I can use.

PS: The other great thing I noticed is that the Great Firewall of China doesn't block smtp.gmail.com despite the rest of google mail being blocked http://www.wired.com/news/technology/internet/0,71091-0.html?tw=wn_index_5

See http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?t=13007&highlight=google+mail for a full discussion on the use of SMTP within China

[Rob Pomeroy]

You are technically correct.

I know.  (Cue smug grin.  All right, hit me if you want to.)

However, ChinaNetCom do not provide an SMTP service. I spent a long time talking to their customer support line with my wife translating for me, and also talked to several competent Chinese computer users, only to discover that everyone uses 163.com or hotmail via HTTP.

I think the issue here is China's highly restrictive country-wide firewall/censorship policy, rather than unavailability of a particular protocol.

Nearly all well designed SMTP servers from ISP's will reject any outgoing email that doesn't originate from their own broadband or dialup connections.

It is a trivial matter for a spammer to trick many SMTP servers into thinking that an email originates within the ISP's circuits though.

I've configured my own UK SMTP server to reject any outgoing email that doesn't originate from my internal LAN, and so as I havn't configured VPN on my LAN I can't use that from my laptop on China.

Which server software are you using?  When not set up a restrictive relay (accessible only by you)?  Or a web interface (e.g. Squirrelmail) that enables email to originate from your own server?

[banjo67xxx]

I think the issue here is China's highly restrictive country-wide firewall/censorship policy, rather than unavailability of a particular protocol.

It is a trivial matter for a spammer to trick many SMTP servers into thinking that an email originates within the ISP's circuits though.

Which server software are you using?  When not set up a restrictive relay (accessible only by you)?  Or a web interface (e.g. Squirrelmail) that enables email to originate from your own server?

I was making a point about how easy it is to use gmail as an outgoing SMTP server, to circumvent all of these issues.

The unavailability (or if you prefer me to say the difficulty in finding accessible servers) of the protocol, and the knowledge required to trick SMTP servers, makes it non-trivial to configure OE or Thunderbird to work within China without using gmail (or other similar SMTP services).

I could set up a web interface, configure a restrictive relay, or even install SMTP server software on the laptop, but why bother when I've got gmail?

FYI, I'm using Sendmail 8.11.7 on Solaris 7 with procmailsanitiser on an old SPARCstation-1 which I borrowed from work 6 years ago. Other than editting the /etc/aliases file occasionally and adding new user accounts, I've not had to do anything to maintain this antique for atleast 3 years  

[Rob Pomeroy]

I was making a point about how easy it is to use gmail as an outgoing SMTP server, to circumvent all of these issues.

Yes, sorry, it's not always easy to gauge a poster's level of technical expertise on the basis of a few posts.

FYI, I'm using Sendmail 8.11.7 on Solaris 7 with procmailsanitiser on an old SPARCstation-1 which I borrowed from work 6 years ago. Other than editting the /etc/aliases file occasionally and adding new user accounts, I've not had to do anything to maintain this antique for atleast 3 years  

And I suspect you haven't even had to reboot it.