Technical Help Centre - Gconnect - The Business ISP

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Relaying Mail Gconnect provide mail relay for its connectivity and hosting customers as part of the service. Our servers run on the FreeBSD (UNIX like) operating system with a combination of Sendmail and Exim as the mail transfer agents. The features of the service are as follows:   -   -   -   -   -   -

• SMTP Authentication required • Max Message Size -> 30MB • Maximum Recipients per message -> 30 • Client IPs checked with Spamhaus-XBL and ORDB • Full log files are stored • File Attachments such as .pif, .bat, .exe, .scr, etc are not permitted What does all that mean? Firstly, these measures are in place to protect our customers, both individually and as a group. It is of great benefit to customers to know that a second line of defence is in place against mail abuse, which will ultimately make using the mail relay service safe and sustainable. SMTP Authentication This process requires the user to supply a username and password when sending mail through the a server. Its purpose is to increase security and prevent unscrupulous users from sending thousands of unsolicited emails (spam) through the server. These security measures are in place to protect all of the users on the system as servers which permit spam often get blacklisted in black-hole lists such as ‘Spamhaus’ and ‘Spamcop’ (see below for further details). In addition we are also able to provide relaying for other users who do not host their email services with us, where a POP authentication before sending mechanism would not be possible Setting up your mail client (outlook and the like) to use this process is very simple Maximum Message Size We allow users to attach 30 MB files and also receive them into the system, but it is not recommended, you will receive no thanks from someone with a 56k connection! If your business needs large data files to be transported, then an ftp service may be more appropriate. Maximum recipients The servers simply deliver the first 30 and ignores the rest, again this is part of an anti spam policy. IP lookups in blacklists Each time a user attempts to relay a mail through the server the IP address of the client machine is checked against a database held at Spamhaus, which collects data about IP numbers which have either been compromised or are sending out spam messages. If the IP is black listed, then the email will not be delivered. In addition, the number is also looked up in the ORDB (Open Relay DataBase), if your IP is listed here, then again you will not be permitted to relay the mail. More details can be found at www.spamhaus.org and www.ordb.org Logging Copious logs of mail relay are kept and archived, this assists us with trouble shooting user problems and allows us to run reports on usage. Often we are able to tell users that they have been compromised before they are aware of it themselves! Blocked File attachments< Users are not permitted to send file attachments that potentially contain harmful code or scripts, your recipients will not thank you for sending this kind of mail. Any person who uses a spam scanning service will probably block these files anyway, and the majority of users who try to send them have normally acquired a virus from somewhere, which is trying to mail to your contacts list. Firewall Issues There should be no firewall issues with relaying mail through Gconnect. The outgoing port from the client is a randomly picked high port number to destination port 25. Most firewalls allow the tcp/ip ‘conversation’ to take place if the initial request is made from behind the firewall. Port Forwarding Issues Some connection providers redirect any request made to a destination port of 25 to their own SMTP service, which often causes confusion. Even though your copy of outlook express may list our smtp relay server in the box, if you have dialled one of these ISPs to connect to the net, your mail is being forwarded to them. This often appears to users that the username and password are being rejected. You can test is this is the case by opening a command prompt and typing: C:> telnet your_smtp_server_name 25 If the response does not have the word gconnect in it, you may be being redirected.