sendmail setup

[usleepless at gmail.com]

List, Guys and Girls,

although i know this is not a specific freebsd issue, i will ask the
question nevertheless.

normally, i sent my outgoing email through my isp ( relay.x.z ). this
server seems to be down at the moment.

so after working with bsd for years, i decided to dive into sendmail.
i read a lot, setup the stuff and tested sh*t.

so basically, it seems to work fine: i can send messages between
machines on the LAN, but messages to the outside(gmail, other domains)
timeout.

i ran tcpdump on the external interface, and the only thing that seems
to happen is my machine contacting the other machines, but they never
reply!:

22:24:25.763774 x.y.z.4091 > gsmtp183.google.com.smtp: S
1796563309:1796563309(0) win 57344 <mss 1460> (DF)

how come? how do i find out? i checked /var/log/security and stuff is
not being blocked by ipfw.

sendmail reports:
stat=Deferred: Operation timed out with gsmtp163.google.com.

i have masqueraded(sendmail) with my isp-assigned-domain-name (
ipXXzYYY.provider.country ), and with another domain i own.

am i missing something obvious?

thanks in advance for any help,

regards,

usleep