Re: Q: Setting retries on the half-hour?

[Paul Fox <pgf@american.com>]

 > 
 > > I guess one good solution exists now, although its expensive (at least
 > > for me): buy a router ($1000 US-$1500 US) that presents a dialup as a
 > > virtual Ethernet (something like an Ascend Pipeline 50?) that would
 > > connect transparently to your Internet service provider (ISP) whenever
 > > an outbound SMTP connection to a remote host takes place.  However,
 > > this solution would also require that your ISP implement dialup on
 > > demand at their site too, something I think most ISPs wouldn't be
 > > interested in.
 > 
 > 	Hmm.. You mean from your ISP to yourself so that the ISP
 > 	does dialing ?   I see why they are not very much interested
 > 	in such a setup  :-)  (It is a question of billing...)

ISP's are going to have to solve this problem -- a lot of people want
that service.  one feature of the Ascend boxes is that they can do a
dial-back connection -- your ISP can call you, your box hangs up, and
calls back.  the Ascend product can _also_ do Caller-id authentication --
i can refuse a call from you if it doesn't have the right CLID info.  so
what is really needed is a combination of the two features -- refuse the
call based on CLID (so that it is never answered), and then dial-back.
the Ascend products do not do this, but if Ascend is as smart as it is
profitable, it will soon.  :-)

back on the main subject -- i receive mail at foxharp.boston.ma.us (my
home domain) via an MX forwarder that queues my mail with UUCP.  so i
poll that site twice a day for mail, using uucp-over-tcp.  when i _send_
mail, it goes out via smtp -- i actually run sendmail at home (it was
easiser :-), and i set it to always queue mail.  i then set the "queuerun"
interval suitably long so that the line isn't always hopping up and down.
it sounds to me like this sort of asymmetric arrangement might help
the original problem -- the ISP wanted him to do the sending -- i'll
bet they don't care about the receiving problem nearly so much.

receiving via uucp has the added advantage that my home machine can go
down for several days, and no mail bounces -- uucp has an easily tunable
bounce interval.

paul
---------------------
    paul fox                            american internet corporation
    pgf@american.com			(home: pgf@foxharp.boston.ma.us)