General SMTP/MTA Question

[inode0]

On 1/13/07, Evan Klitzke <eklitzke.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> How resistant are most MTAs to this kind of failure? In other words, how
> realistic is it to expect that someone else's MTA trying to deliver mail
> to mine will hold it in its mail queue and retry sending long enough for
> it to get through? Will this actually happen, or would a typical MTA
> just drop the message from its mail queue if the domain wasn't reachable
> (or not accepting connections on port 25)? I am hoping some veteran
> sysadmins on the list will have enough experience to know what to
> expect.

If possible I would really recommend you get a static IP, you'll be
happier in the long run if you are doing just about anything
interesting. You might find as you send more email from home that a
lot of places will not accept mail from a variety of dynamic IPs. It
might be worthwhile at least to check if your provider submits its
dynamic IP range to any of the blocking lists.

Mail queueing and being resent is routine, common, and the way mail is
supposed to work. I would be very surprised if your DNS changes
propagate in 30 minutes though but it should propagate faster than
most mail servers will give up. I think trying from 2-5 days is
routine in my experience for retries before a mail server gives up.
That is configurable on each server though.

John