A historical review of the multi-decade centralization and capture of the email protocol.

Interesting history and analysis of SMTP’s history. How can we prevent fedi and other open protocols from suffering the same fates?

  • observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca
    31·
    4 months ago

    You can’t successfully use a home email server.

    Mostly true (server can be home but using the ISP network directly probably won’t work)

    You can’t successfully use an email server on a (cloud) VPS.

    Bullshit

    You can’t successfully use an email server on a bare metal machine in your own datacenter.

    Bullshit

    As such, it is my distinct displeasure to declare the death of SMTP. The protocol is no longer usable. And as we can see, this devolution occurred organically.

    Bullshit

    • ramble81@lemm.ee
      1·
      4 months ago

      You can’t successfully use an email server on a bare metal machine in your own Datacenter

      Calling complete BS on that. I work in a medium size company and we do just that. Don’t know what he’s thinking.

    • xyguy@startrek.websiteEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Can, yes.

      Should, maybe.

      Enjoy doing, unlikely.

      And for sure your home isp has all the email ports blocked upstream.

      With all that being said, to call SMTP dead is wildly insane. I do figure it will die someday though. Probably around the same time of universal IPV6 adoption during the year of the linux desktop.

      • denshirenji@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 months ago

        My ISP doesn’t. It an electric company that offers fiber, so not your typical telecommunications company. Still though, not a single blocked port.

        On topic, I tried an email server and it is too much of a pain in the ass IMHO, without the requisite training and experience, but certainly not impossible.

        • Dave.@aussie.zone
          0·
          4 months ago

          My most recent ISP does CGNAT. They don’t hide it, it’s mentioned in their support pages. A quick email is all it takes to switch you over to an open address though.

          Anyway I’ve got a $5/mo server with akami that looks after my email and it’s associated domain.

          It took about three hours of following a guide to set up DMARC and etc etc and it works unobtrusively, and is about ten times faster than my old ISP IMAP account that I had for about twenty years.

    • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      I’m going to add “bullshit” to the first. I’ve gone 2 decades running a few email domains on my home servers, on 3 different ISPs. Its not rocket surgery.

        • kalpol@lemmy.world
          1·
          4 months ago

          Same here. Static IP though. I did set up another experiment with a haproxy vps just to see if I could do it if I lost my static IP, worked perfectly done that way too.

          Fail2ban, pfblocker, and soamassassin work great.