[Hidden-tech] DSL & Voip

[Michael Muller]

Stacey,

You are not the only one who is experiencing the issue of Verizon unilaterally changing the SMTP port blocking / firewalling.  This behavior costs small companies like mine a lot of time and agravation. (Disclaimer: Montague WebWorks, of whom I am a partner, is Stacey's hosting company.)

Whenever Verizon makes a change we get barraged with calls.  Since this occurance is really out of our hands -- essentially we're on the other side of a wall we have no control over -- all we can do is offer suggestions for port numbers and server names.  And Verizon's support numbers and pages are usually very hard to get and sometimes completely useless.

I would imagine if they keep this up one of two things will happen:  (a) America will give up on vanity domains for email and all switch to gmail or hotmail or yahoo or whatever, thus abandoning the small ISP's services, and/or (b) the small ISPs will organize with the cafe owners (will explain that in a sec) and file a class-action suit against Verizon and any other large connectivity providers for loss of business and unfiar practices.

To say that switching to port 587 will stop spam is a complete joke. I mean really, what spammer sits in a cafe and sends a million emails from their laptop?  If you're a real spammer you've got your own server or you're using virus-bot technology, which infects and uses unsuspecting desktop and laptop machines across the Internet to send their spam emails.  Also, do you think they don't know that Verizon has changed to port 587?  Aren't the spammers EXPERTS in how email works?  Do you think everyone else will know to use port 587 and they wouldn't? Are they walking around right now scratching their heads saying "well hell... how come it's not working?"

Bell South and Comcast both require that ALL outgoing POP-style email (not webmail) uses their own mailservers with a username and password.  This is unfortunate for people sitting in a cafe somewhere, using Outlook or an iPhone or any email client, because they'll never know the username and password to use.  So, they're screwed.  And maybe they'll stop going to that cafe.  Sucks for the cafe owners.

No, it's bogus. And at a certain point they should all have to stop these inconvenient practices.

The best thing they could do for the convenience of users of their service if they want to stop spam is to simply throttle down traffic over port 25 and 587.  Stop any connection if more than, say, 25 emails are being sent in a single shot. Simple.

They have the technology, and that would open up commerce again for the small ISP (such as myself) and the cafes who can't get their customer email out.  I can get testimonials from two cafe owners that the recent change impacted their business.

Mik



At 02:45 PM 10/27/2009, Stacey Langknecht wrote:
>   ** Be sure to fill out the survey/skills inventory in the member's area.
>   ** If you did, we all thank you.
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>
>
>Hello Everyone –
> 
>A few things here
first, some feedback about Verizon: the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced, and this was from the beginning of my dsl service a few years ago! Everything is awful from their obnoxious auto-operator to the incompetent csr’s. I just got my email back up and running really due to the help of my host company, not Verizon, even though it was their fault (they blocked the port a few weeks ago, then told me port 587 was fine, then after a few weeks that stopped working, and now port 26 is working again, but who knows how long this will last?!) – all this is because we have a home business with our own domain name. So
.does anyone know of another company that offers dsl service to home biz folks that’s also reasonable???? I understand that Comcast, AT&T and the other huge companies are all doing the same thing, and Crocker is more expensive and I hear that they don’t offer ‘round the clock service if something goes wrong. Any suggestions? 
> 
>I’m also looking into VOIP and have heard mixed reviews on Vonage and Magic Jack. Has anyone used Ooma? I have a friend down south who uses them and says they’re OK. It seems like the big issue with Voip is the connection. Any feedback here? 
> 
>Thanks for all your help!!
> 
>Stacey Langknecht
>Hotsapp Woodworks 
>413-367-9408
><mailto:stacey at hotsapp.com>stacey at hotsapp.com
> 
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--------
Michael Muller
office (413) 863-6455
cell (413) 320-5336
skype: michaelBmuller
http://MontagueWebWorks.com

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