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.

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From: Mike Peckar via WLUG [mailto:wlug@lists.wlug.org]
Subject: [WLUG] opinions on home email services