Still no sendmail - but a clue?

[William John Murray]

>> But I tried 'telnet smtp.aol.com 25' and 'telnet my-employer 25'
>> and saw somthing very odd. The connect message is:
>> 
>> 220 smtp-los01.proxy.aol.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.11/8.12.11; Fri, 11
Mar
>> 2005 02:53:43 -0500
>> 
>> for any host I connect to, with the los01 number maybe changing.
>> Somehow I get redirected to AOL whenever I use port 25. Does this
ring a
>> bell with anyone? [Recall..I can send email from evolution]
>> 
>> If I go a dns lookup this is not the expected route.
>
>This is because you are using an AOL dialup. As an anti-spam measure,
>AOL redirects all outbound SMTP connections from their customers
through
>AOL's mail servers. This enables them to apply rate limits, quickly
>identify spammers/trojanned windows boxes etc. One of the results of
>this is that AOL, despite having on average a very technically-
>challenged customer base, emits a remarkably spall amount of spam
>compared with the likes of comcast, verizon, roadrunner etc.
>
>Paul.
  Thanks Paul and Ian,
               There are still two things that don't makes sense:
*) I use evolution to sendmail to my work authorised smtp server. This
works. But when I 'telnet my-work-server 25' I get diverted. If
evolution has a way round the port 25 redirect, maybe sendmail can use
it?

*) My authorisation credentials are still failing if I try to use AOLs
server. Maybe this is because I don't really get there? Should I try oto
reference smtp-los02.proxy.aol.com or smtp.aol.com in authinfo do you
think?
   Thanks again for all this.
          Bill