I responded to an email message the other day and got a failure notice in return.  It seems that Road Runner has blocked direct connections to its inbound mail servers from the residential dynamic space.  See Road Runner Mail Blocks for more information.

This isn’t a problem for most people, I know.  But I send mail through the SMTP server on my laptop rather than connect to Road Runner’s SMTP server.  The primary reason is so I can send mail when I’m traveling.  Unless I’m connected to Road Runner’s dynamic space, I don’t have access to their SMTP server.  I guess I could change the outbound server when I’m at home, but it’s always annoying to change it again whenever I go off network.

I’ve run into similar problems with other servers that treat my home-based server as “suspect.”  The solution there usually is to wait 30 minutes or so and try again.  Those servers are set up to give a non-permanent error to suspect servers on the first attempt, but to allow the message to go through on a retry.  The idea here is to discourage spambots that use a shotgun approach to email and don’t check return status.  I don’t know why Road Runner didn’t implement that technique instead of the iron curtain.

I could, of course, use my Web-based client when I’m on the road.  Except that I detest Web interfaces and it’s difficult then to get an archive of the sent messages back down to my laptop once I get home.

Would somebody please fix the email spam problem?  I’ve only been waiting for the last five years.