About 15 years ago, I found that I could send email directly between my OpenVMS home system and work computers. [I didn't have to set up anything. It just worked.] [Not a server per se (to, say, PCs with email clients); just using the built-in mail program to send and receive mail.] Then, it stopped working. It turns out that Verizon (for DSL, at least), started reporting/registering all of the DHCP IP addresses that they would assign to home users as SPAM sources, so they'd be blocked everywhere. You had to pay for business-class service (and get a static address) for them to let things through. Verizon also blocked port 80 inbound. [Easy to get around; I just started using a different port.] {Verizon was a nightmare in general. They collected the money that they pretended on the bills is a tax, even though it's a fee that Verizon keeps, purportedly for maintaining copper lines, and actually spent the money on cell phone infrastructure. [There were lawsuits against Verizon in several states for fraud; In California, at least, Verizon settled.] Places with nothing but copper had dreadful service. [I started running curl in a script to log all of the outages. And, I often managed to get no more than 32K baud. When it rained, the baud rate often dropped below 1K. I was paying for 1M - 3M.]} Then, some volunteers in my town arranged for the local municipal light department to run optical fiber cable through the town. We now have Spectrum, and, as far as I can tell, nothing is blocked. [And, the modem presents a real internet address to the house/Ethernet side. -I have a separate router, separate WiFi access point...] Haven't tried sending email directly in a while, though. _____ From: Mike Peckar via WLUG [mailto:wlug@lists.wlug.org] Subject: [WLUG] opinions on home email services