What I did was use just ping the mail.bellsouth.net server, and use the ip instead of the hostname. The server my mail was running on could resolve fine, but just for some reason it would not send mail, I had came to a conclusion why, but now it escapes me, their distribution of email servers is probably off. But you can still smart host, just through the ip.

Having a small business I run at home I enjoyed using my exchange server and all its features, in particular synchronizing my calendar with my day job. To be honest, the main reason I ran my own mail server for 8 years was because it seemed that no one else was competent enough to keep their running. I got so fed up I ran my own with an MX Backup mail server for so long with zero troubles.

Switching to Consumer DSL I expected to simply set a smart host like I have done in the past and if need be run a pop collector to my website mail server.

AT&T seems to not allow me to send mail to mail.bellsouth.net from my exchange server but will allow it from Outlook express or if I of course set my Outlook client to use their SMTP. It also seems to jack the packets of my pop collector somehow.

They suggested I go back to business DSL.

I have now since decided to run everything on hotmail. It is a shame, but my customers will now have to put up with the ads on the bottom of my emails. I just can’t justify the ridiculous charges for Business class DSL, maintaining a server, antivirus etc just for 3 mailboxes and convenience.

If I get more customers I will probably switch back, it was sure nice to have a 255.255.255.248 subnet that I could assign to various servers and networks within my home domain. The PTR records meant I never went into anyone’s bit bucket or flagged as spam.

But as of now, I got too much going on now to bother with maintaining my own servers. I plan to drop all unnecessary stuff I got running at home and plan on simplifying my life.