Sending and Receiving my own mail!

Hi all.

Simple question but with a complex answer I bet.

When I send and receive mail, like most, it travels via my ISP - so in
essence they can keep a log of all mail coming and going from my account.
Is it possible to set up my own mail server, say on another machine at home
with a separate internet connection, so that it deals with my mail and sends
it direct rather than going through my ISP?

Is it possible?

Thanks

Phil

Phil

On 2004-08-23, Phil <> schrieb :
> Hi all.
>
> Simple question but with a complex answer I bet.
>
> When I send and receive mail, like most, it travels via my ISP - so in
> essence they can keep a log of all mail coming and going from my account.
> Is it possible to set up my own mail server, say on another machine at home
> with a separate internet connection, so that it deals with my mail and sends
> it direct rather than going through my ISP?
>
> Is it possible?
>

With enough motivation, anything is possible. You can indeed set up a mail
server at home, using solutions for either Windows or Linux. You will be
required to do a bit of reading before you do though, as 'homies' like you
and I are often given stick (grief/hassle) by those who work in the industry
professionally for attempting such a thing. One of the assumptions is that we will
misconfigure the servers and end up relaying spam all over the place.

(Before all you sysadmins fire up the blowtorches ... I can totally
understand why you adopt this stance.)

To address the first part of your post, I would guess that ISP's just keep a
track of the mail headers (?) and not the body of the mails, as this would
(to my way of thinking) require an awful lot of storage capacity to achieve.

If you have a broadband connection at home, with a couple of boxes, you can
rig them up via a router, and forward a port or ports to the mail server
machine. No seperate Internet connection required, unless you've already got
one.

To address the last part of your post, sending mail directly to another
ISP's mail server from what is known as a 'residential' address (your
broadband IP address at home) can be none too successful sometimes,
depending on the mail domain involved.

If I understand correctly, many mail domains block 'residential' IP
addresses as this is exactly how a lot of spammers operate. Get a broadband
connection, configure a mail server, and commence a spam tsunami on the rest
of the world. Bastards.

If you're prepared to put in a bit of work to understand what's involved in
setting up a mail server, and make damn sure it's configured properly, you
can operate one from home and get a lot of satisfaction from doing so.

You don't say what O/S you're using, or will use, so if it's Windows, I can
say from experience that 'Kerio Mail Server' (http://www.kerio.com) is good,
but not cheap. Although cheaper than some MS solutions I'm sure. If it's
Linux you're into, of course you have Sendmail (http://www.sendmail.org).
There are other Linux MTA's (Mail Transfer Agents) but I've always found
Sendmail works just fine for me.

You can set up your own mail domain at a site like http://www.dyndns.org ,
and they also offer very convenient backup servers, but I think it's only if
you purchase a domain name, rather than go for a freebie one. It's still not
very much money anyway.

To conclude, you could just not bother and continue to use your ISP's mail
servers, with maybe a bit of spam filtering at your end. I don't think many
ISP's are going to be too interested in the contents of your mails unless
you give them reason to.

I probably haven't helped at all, but I thought it was worth a shot.


Cordially,

Kleeb.

On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 11:18:23 GMT, Kleeb <> wrote:

>On 2004-08-23, Phil <> schrieb :
>> Hi all.
>>
>> Simple question but with a complex answer I bet.
>>
>> When I send and receive mail, like most, it travels via my ISP - so in
>> essence they can keep a log of all mail coming and going from my account.
What you have today via your ISP is a user account and they do store your
messages until you retrieve them via your mail program. They also do keep a
copy for a finite period of time.
>> Is it possible to set up my own mail server, say on another machine at
home
>> with a separate internet connection, so that it deals with my mail and
sends
>> it direct rather than going through my ISP?
>> Is it possible?
Yep. The key will be to have a separate/different type of internet
connection. In order to have SMTP traffic sent directly to a server of
your choosing you will need to own and control the domain. This will allow
you to assign a dedicated IP address to yourdomain.com (the A record) so IP
packets (mail or otherwise) know how to find you.
Check out http://www.dyndns.org/support/ for more info.

In article <lJjWc.66$>,
says...
> Hi all.
>
> Simple question but with a complex answer I bet.
>
> When I send and receive mail, like most, it travels via my ISP - so in
> essence they can keep a log of all mail coming and going from my account.
> Is it possible to set up my own mail server, say on another machine at home
> with a separate internet connection, so that it deals with my mail and sends
> it direct rather than going through my ISP?
>
> Is it possible?

Sure, many businesses do just that. Most ISP's block inbound port 25
(SMTP) and port 80 (web) on their residential network. Other, that don't
block it, often scan for open SMTP or Web servers and then disconnect
your service until you call them

Having your own email server is a great way to ensure that you get all
of your email, and it's also a lot of work if done properly.

As for sending, you don't actually have to SEND through your ISP, you
can, if using Windows XP Professional, install the SMTP service and send
directly through your own computer, but you would still recv using your
ISP.

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