Lori Barfield wrote:
quoted text
> consumer IP space is really a problem for outgoing mail.
> at the very least, all the majors will add spam points to
> your messages and so your mail is a lot more likely to
> be bulked.  even resold IP space at large colos is treated
> that way by default, and it causes heartburn for businesses.
> just having reverse DNS isn't good enough, either, because
> if it has a name that "looks" like dynamic IP space, that
> can also get your mail treated with prejudice.  it's best to
> own your own reverse DNS so you can give it a realistic
> look.
>
> you can try to work with the major ISPs to get your IP(s)
> whitelisted, and try to convince folks to take them off their
> no-no lists as well, but that can be very time consuming
> and you'll have mixed results.
>
> bottom line is, check out the reputation of your IP space
> before buying it.  you don't want the problem to start with.
>
> ...lori
>
>   
My DSL provider in Arizona is Qwest. The basic service is $26 and for 
another $5 they will toss you a fixed IP address. As pointed out earlier 
you must have fixed IP address for all practical purposes. You may 
however set
MTA even with dynamic IP but the chances are that most other MTA will 
bounce your mail. However some will not. Even with dynamic IP, I was 
able to send emails to my friends working for Apple. Apparently, Apple 
is not very afraid of the spam or they have crystal ball to see which 
dynamic IP addresses are legit.

The Qwest internet speed in Arizona vary from 1.5-7 Mps pending how far 
is one's house is from their switch.
I know that those speeds look funny to people from Europe and Japan but 
ISP providers in U. S. are monopolies thanks to the president Bush. A 
decent speed of 10-100Mps on T1 will cost you about $1400 a month.

Qwest's modem blocks by default www hosting, MTA, and most other 
services. However it is trivial to log into the modem and unblock the 
ports. Qwest actually actively encourage customers to have fixed IP 
addresses for purpose of online gaming and conference hosting.

I did run my own MTA with the proper domain name that can be purchased 
for about $10 a year. I had no problems receiving incoming mail and 
mixed success with sending mail. I did that because I wanted to learn a 
few things.
My real MTA is at the University I work for and I fetch my mail via IMAP 
server to my local mail client as probably most people do.

I would suggest that before you make definitive decision to run your own 
MTA you try to do dynamic mail hosting. I used free DynDNS services 
provided by DynDNS.com. The way that it works is that they run a honest 
MTA which does virtual hosting for many servers which do have only 
dynamic IP address.
This is usually extra service you get from them as their main thing is 
virtual web hosting. Basic web and mail
virtual hosting is free but their real objective is to get you sign for 
their paid services.

Their MTA is completely legit and on the white list so your outgoing 
mail will never bounce. The big draw back in my eyes is that you must 
run something like opendd which is DynDNS client in order to update 
their server about your current IP address.

The positive thing is that they will run spamassassin and clamav for you.

Kind Regards,
Predrag