There is also this point to consider. A server can disallow telnet access
to the port if they desire to. I personally have never had much trouble
with netscape, on the other hand Hotmail and Yahoo live on a short list of
banned mail providers.

At 03:43 AM 17/09/2004, you wrote:
>On 9/16/2004 11:21 AM, Stan Horwitz wrote:
>
>>When I log onto our listserv host and try to telnet to netscape.com 25
>>I get the following
>>
>># telnet netscape.com 25
>>Trying 64.12.37.146...
>>telnet: connect to address 64.12.37.146: Connection timed out
>>telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out
>>
>>which suggests to me that there's a problem with netscape receiving email,
>>but I can send individual emails to the same address from my email account
>>just fine.
>
>To the best of my knowledge, we are not encountering problems sending
>messages to addresses in the netscape.com domain. Having said that, I
>should point out that your trouble-shooting technique is flawed.
>
>Many sites create domain-level DNS A records which resolve to their web
>servers, so that web surfers who type the domain name in the browser
>location box will be directed to the domain's web site. That seems to be
>what Netscape has done. Consequently, your SMTP connection attempt was
>directed to a  web server, not a mail server. I am not surprised that the
>SMTP connection request timed out.
>
>When you send an email message, your mail server performs a DNS query to
>identify the MX (Mail eXchanger) host for the domain portion of the
>recipient address. When you are testing email delivery to a host or
>domain, you also need to direct your SMTP connection request to the
>appropriate MX host. You can use 'nslookup -q=MX' to identify the domain's
>MX host.
>
>As you can see below, netscape.com and www.netscape.com resolve to the
>same IP address, but the MX host for the netscape.com domain has a
>different IP address.
>
>----- begin -----
>* get the IP address for 'netscape.com'
>sunbear(prussell):~ > nslookup netscape.com
>Server:  bind.nd.edu
>Address:  129.74.250.100
>
>Non-authoritative answer:
>Name:    netscape.com
>Addresses:  64.12.37.146, 64.12.180.19
>
>* get the IP address for the likely netscape.com web server
>sunbear(prussell):~ > nslookup www.netscape.com
>Server:  bind.nd.edu
>Address:  129.74.250.100
>
>Non-authoritative answer:
>Name:    www.gwww.netscape.com
>Address:  64.12.37.146
>Aliases:  www.netscape.com
>
>* get the MX hostname for the netscape.com domain
>sunbear(prussell):~ > nslookup -q=MX netscape.com
>Server:  bind.nd.edu
>Address:  129.74.250.100
>
>Non-authoritative answer:
>netscape.com    preference = 10, mail exchanger = mail.netscape.everyone.net
>
>Authoritative answers can be found from:
>netscape.com    nameserver = ns2.netscape.com
>netscape.com    nameserver = ns.netscape.com
>netscape.com    nameserver = ns1.netscape.com
>
>* get the IP address of the MX host for the netscape.com domain
>sunbear(prussell):~ > nslookup mail.netscape.everyone.net
>Server:  bind.nd.edu
>Address:  129.74.250.100
>
>Non-authoritative answer:
>Name:    mail.netscape.everyone.net
>Address:  216.200.145.10
>----- end -----
>
>--
>Paul Russell
>Senior Systems Administrator
>OIT Messaging Services Team
>University of Notre Dame