Re: Email direct from IBM i without relay (was: New lower cost IBMi announced)

In 99.9% of the cases, this is how it works with PC clients or clients

such

as SNDDST, MSF, MAILTOOL, ESEND, etc.

Again, we're not talking about sending email from PC clients.

I'll leave it to you and Richard to explain how MAILTOOL and ESEND works.
But SNDDST and MSF use the IBM i SMTP client to connect send email directly
to recipients, without the help of a relay service.

Wrong. If it does this, it's set up wrong. Sending email from the i is no
different than sending from a PC client.

CHGSMTPA has a place to enter your mail router. Then you set FIREWALL to
*YES. With V6 or so and up you also need to set the Forwarding Mail Hub
server to the mail router.

With these settings (and others required for setup) SNDDST ,QtmmSendMail
API, other IBM email methods send using the mail router specified in
CHGSMTPA.

It is possible to do it how you mention, but that doesn't mean it's the
right way.

I won't get into why (except reverse DNS being one) but rarely if ever

should email be delivered directly from the client to the recipient.

I don't understand your point regarding reverse DNS, but I do understand
that you "won't get into why".

You would if you dealt with email on the i as much as I have. :)

Port 25 is only for non-secure connections. 465, 587 and others are used
for SSL/TLS. When connecting to a mail router that requires that type of
authentication.

In regard to port 25 being used for non-secure communications, SMTP is not
a secure protocol. My understanding is that some server along the chain
will eventually connect to the SMTP server on port 25 at the final endpoint
to deliver the message.

The protocol itself isn't secure, just like HTTP isn't secure but HTTP over
SSL (HTTPS) is secured by it's transport mechanism.

Maybe in 1998 you didn't need a mail router in the middle and everything
was port 25, but not now.