[kwlug-disc] Testing a mail port

[Hubert Chathi]

On Wed, 9 Mar 2016 10:49:48 -0500, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> said:

> To clarify ...  You are trying to contact port 25 on mail.ufn.com, but
> that host is not the MX server, and therefore does not respond
> (perhaps no SMTP server running there, hence my initial netstat
> message to verify).

This is what I get:
  $ nc mail.ufn.com 25
  220 mail.ufn.com Welcome to the @Mail SMTP Server ( Exim )

So they are indeed running a mail server on that machine.

I get nothing for port 587, though, so obviously there's something wrong
with the information they gave.

Note that the MX record only indicates the mail servers for *incoming*
mail, but not for *outgoing* mail.  You are free to use any other
servers not listed in your MX records for outgoing.