MTA advice ??

[RW]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 06:49:56 +0100
Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:

> Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> 
>  
> > Receiving mail directly will be more possible, but tricky.  You
> > will need to use a dynamic DNS system.  Also do consider uptime and 
> > reliability.  In the old days, if one MTA couldn't reach another it 
> > would hold stuff in its queue for four or five days.  Now, most
> > MTAs appear to be configured to give up after 24 hours.  So if your 
> > mailserver is down for a day, mail will be bounced and never
> > delivered to you.
> 
> In which case those mail systems are not in compliance with the RFCs. 
> 
> RFC 2821 Section 4.5.4.1 says:
> 
>    Retries continue until the message is transmitted or the sender
> gives up; the give-up time generally needs to be at least 4-5 days.
> The parameters to the retry algorithm MUST be configurable.
> 
> ie. 4-5 days is the /minimum/ time to hold messages in the queue and
> keep retrying.

It doesn't say that. The only concrete requirement there is the last
sentence about the retry algorithm, the rest is just friendly advice.

There are cheap backup services that will avoid this kind of problem
though.