[Cialug] Email server

Fri May 12 18:58:16 UTC 2017

Then you should be well situated. The nice thing about having a business
account is that you get an SLA and Mediacom will watch the blocklists for
you. Also, malicious spammers aren't going to sign up for it, so only
accidental spammers will be problematic, and Mediacom will handle that too.

On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 1:55 PM <khamil8686 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Good point, thanks! I found I could upgrade to a business account for the
> same price that I could rent a VPS (+$20) so figured I’d give it a shot to
> try my own. I will try and see if I run into the same stuff. Time will
> tell, I plan to set It all up this weekend 😊 We will see if I make it a
> week or not, lol. The spammers sound pretty hardcore!
>
>
>
> *From: *Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org>
> *Sent: *Friday, May 12, 2017 1:52 PM
>
>
> *To: *Central Iowa Linux Users Group <cialug at cialug.org>
> *Subject: *Re: [Cialug] Email server
>
>
>
> I realize I'm coming late to the game (half the messages to CIALUG go to a
>
> "special place"). I just wanted to explicitly point out something that has
>
> been kind of said in this thread.
>
>
>
> One of the biggest challenges of running your own e-mail server is the
>
> blocklists. These are services that most major e-mail providers use to
>
> auto-block mail from untrustworthy sources. E-mail sent from IP addresses
>
> in the blocklist never even get to the SPAM filters, they just get
>
> auto-dropped or auto-rejected.
>
>
>
> Sometimes (often?) entire IP address blocks and subnets are added to these
>
> lists, and it is quite common for low-cost hosting providers to be in these
>
> blocks. One customer will send a bunch of SPAM and for a day or week or
>
> month an entire subnet will get blocked. If you are in the same subnet,
>
> this means anyone using Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail and etc will be unable to
>
> send you messages or receive yours, and they/you may not even get a bounce
>
> message indicating that the delivery failed.
>
>
>
> For me, this was the last straw and I stopped running my own server. I
>
> don't even run an outgoing server any more. Technically, I do, but it's
>
> smart hosted to Send Grid or, rarely, gmail. This means if my website sends
>
> an email (contact form, error log, etc) it gets queued into Postfix which
>
> then forwards it to Sendgrid for delivery.
>
>
>
> Like others here, I also use GSuite in addition to Send Grid and Mailchimp
>
> for my various e-mail needs.
>
>
>
> One last footnote: If you want to run a mail-server in house, you can. One
>
> of the oldest methods of mail delivery was to have a "sometimes-online"
>
> host periodically connect to a remote mail-queue to fetch and send e-mail.
>
> Keeping the above in mind, it is not an issue to have a cheap VPS be your
>
> queue and then have your internal host connect to it to fetch e-mail and
>
> use the VPS as a smart-host. You could even VPN into your VPS (grin) so
>
> that you have an "almost-always-online" type connection. You still need to
>
> worry about reverse DNS on your VPS, but it does give you the comfort of
>
> having very limited processes running on that host, making it a smaller
>
> attack target.
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 3:26 PM David Champion <dchamp1337 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Technically not always your ISP, although that is usually the case. You
> can
>
> > tell for sure by doing a "whois 8.8.8.8" (substitute your IP) and find
> out
>
> > who owns the netblock range that you fall into.
>
> >
>
> > You can use "dig -x 8.8.8.8" to see what the current PTR is.
>
> >
>
> > mxtoolbox has a bunch of nifty tools available for doing various dns
>
> > queries. This Arin lookup is nice:
>
> >
>
> > https://mxtoolbox.com/arin.aspx
>
> >
>
> > -dc
>
> >
>
> >
>
> > On Mon, May 1, 2017 at 2:26 PM, Nicolai <nicolai-cialug at chocolatine.org>
>
> > wrote:
>
> >
>
> > > On Mon, May 01, 2017 at 12:53:59PM -0500, khamil8686 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > >
>
> > > > One thing I wondered, if I set up an authoritative nameserver on port
>
> > 53
>
> > > > using my domain name, point dns towards there, and put reverse lookup
>
> > > > for my home mail server, would emails be rejected?
>
> > >
>
> > > > Purely an academic example that I was curious about.
>
> > >
>
> > > Well, your authoritative nameserver wouldn't be responsible for
>
> > > answering reverse DNS queries for your IP address; that's your ISP's
>
> > > job.  In other words, nobody would ask your NS for the PTR record of
>
> > > e.g. 53.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa.  All those queries would go to your ISP's
>
> > > nameservers.
>
> > >
>
> > > dig +short ns cialug.org.
>
> > > dig +short cialug.org. # currently 67.224.64.36
>
> > > dig +short ns 64.224.67.in-addr.arpa.
>
> > >
>
> > > Nobody asks the cialug.org nameservers questions about 67.224.64.36.
>
> > >
>
> > > To get a specific PTR record for your IP address, you'd have to ask
>
> > > your VPS/colo provider.
>
> > >
>
> > > Nicolai
>
> > > _______________________________________________
>
> > > Cialug mailing list
>
> > > Cialug at cialug.org
>
> > > http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
>
> > >
>
> > _______________________________________________
>
> > Cialug mailing list
>
> > Cialug at cialug.org
>
> > http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug
>
> >
>
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