Anyone have Comcast for an ISP?

[Predrag Punosevac]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
>   
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Allen
>> Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 10:33 PM
>> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> Subject: Anyone have Comcast for an ISP?
>>
>>
>> Does anyone on here have comcast for an ISP? I use them and today I was
>> messing around on a machine I use for FTP service over my LAN (Not
>> accessible from the net so I'm not worried about using it for back ups)
>> and anyway, I wanted to set up one of my comcast accounts on it so I
>> could do as I've done for years, and use SSH to log into that machine
>> and use fetchmail to grab my email off comcast, and then use Mutt to
>> check it since I really like Mutt.
>>
>> Well, I got sendmail up ad tested that it was working and it was working
>> fine. After that I tried sending a test email with Mutt.
>>
>> For some reason ti failed even though it was the backed up copy of my
>> Muttrc that I used to use on EVERY machine I used mutt on. I always
>> backed it up because I had it looking really nice with colors and also
>> my email address was in there and I built in a mini addy book for my
>> friends and mailing lists I'm on so I didn't have to worry about an
>> address book being deleted by accident.
>>
>> Well, it failed horribly. I can't send an email because it's blocked,
>> and also, using fetchmail isn't exactly working either and I can't stand
>> how getmailrc works....
>>
>> So does anyone here use Comcast and Mutt for an email client that could
>> maybe reply and let me know how they do it? Id' like to use Mutt and
>> also I do like how simple fetchmail is to use, so fi you use these and
>> have Comcast for internet please reply with how you did it. I'm googling
>> right now but everything I find isn't exactly helpful, so if anyone here
>> uses Mutt and has Comcast please let me know how you did it.
>>
>>     
>
> What you have available in the e-mail realm when you are
> on the Comcast network:
>
> For e-mail CLIENTS you may retrieve mail via the standard
> IMAP or POP3 ports from a remote non-comcast mailserver.
>
> For e-mail CLIENTS you may send mail through a remote
> non-comcast mailserver using the submission port 587 and
> authenticated SMTP.
>
> For e-mail SERVERS you can use fetchmail to pretend the
> server is a mail client, then redistribute the mail
> internally.  However you cannot use sendmail to send
> out outgoing mail to port 25 on remote mailservers - unless
> it's to the comcast mailserver.
>
>   Comcast's residential
> TOS prohibits servers and they enforce this by blocking incoming
> traffic going to SMTP, IMAP and POP3 ports.
>
>   
Now, I do know that cable and DSL modems are quite different but I am 
able to log into my Qwest DSL modem and
open the port 25, port 80 or any other port for that matter. I live in 
Arizona so Qwest and Comcast are more or less only two choices for the 
residential ISP.

I had Sandmail server running for about a week but as I do not have 
static IP address, Domain Name, MX
record and Reverse DNS there was no point keeping it as the mail would 
bounce from most mail servers.
Getting static IP address is no big deal as well as Domain Name and 
setting up MX record but I think Qwest
does not provide reverse DNS to residential accounts. They charge $26.95 
+ $6 (7Mps) for static IP for residential accounts. Essentially the 
equivalent  "business" account is about $90 and they do provide reverse 
DNS as well. I think one has to sign some kind liability agreement for 
business account in the case your mail server becomes spam zombie.
In reality you really have to run ClamAv and SpamAssassin beside 
Sendmail which was really overkill just for
my wife and me (my daughters are too small for email accounts).

I use IMAP and SMTP (Thunderbird client) ro recover mail from my 
University mail box. Qwest people were also nice to me after they 
realized that I do not care much for their Windows live and Hotmail 
account and offer me free of charge
5 email accounts on their mail server.

I think that the Comcast is doing something similar so you could use 
Mutt, Pine, or whatever email client you like to recover mail from your 
mail box on Comcast email server. I would not be surprised that they 
also run FreeBSD.

Cheers,
Predrag Punosevac





> Ted
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