I'm really sorry to hear that you're dealing with some personal problems and hope that I or anyone else here didn't add to an already frustrating situation for you. Hopefully things will work out for you and your family and the comments here will only be seen as a slight blur to the more important things you have to deal with. Regardless of what's said we're all still human and we have feelings so my blessings go out to you and yours. I also want to say that I honestly appreciate your assistance and knowledge in this area and feel I would benefit from any correspondence you may put together on dealing with exchange. I know my main problems stem from post installation and configuration on home networks with dsl and dynamic dns. I try to document my configurations but somehow they all seem to end with different results. So any knowledge you can share on those areas would solve a lot of problems that I and probably some of the other newbies encounter. I also don't agree with the lazy comment but to each his/her own. .03 -----Original Message----- From: John Tolmachoff (Lists) [mailto:johnlist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 12:37 PM To: [ExchangeList] Subject: [exchangelist] RE: Newbie using Exchange[Scanned] http://www.MSExchange.org/ After reading all the various comments regarding my response, I feel it necessary to explain: 1. During the last 1 1/2 months our family has been dealing with a medical emergency that concluded Monday with undesired results. As such, I have been on edge. Because of that, my response came across harsh and I apologize for that. 2. When talking about Exchange, (or any e-mail server,) there are 3 areas of focus: Client communications, the server itself and communications with the Internet. (Yes, they often blend together.) My response was focused on communications with the Internet. 3. Yes, we all started somewhere, as I did. However, as we were all taught in school, (I hope,) it is much better to search for the answer than to have it given to you, for if it just given to you, tomorrow you will not remember it. But if you put in the effort to search for it, it is knowledge you will keep. 4. There is a fine line but distinct difference between asking for help and asking what or how to do. This list is to help each other. 5. I am not an Exchange expert. I am on this list to further my Exchange knowledge and problem solving on clients servers. If, during that, I can offer assistance to others in my areas of knowledge, I will. 6. I am heavily involved in e-mail administration through a total of 8 e-mail servers, only 2 of which are Exchange. This includes 3 regional ISP mail servers. Both of those Exchange servers are fronted by other e-mail servers acting as gateways. 7. I am heavily involved on the war on spam. 8. One of the most frustrating problems in the war on spam is problem senders who because of various misconfigurations, non-RFC compliance, blatant disregard for standards, and lack of understanding or care, cause legitimate messages to be tagged and/or held and/or deleted. This causes us to either whitelist (undesired because of domino effect) the sender or decrease the effectiveness of certain filters and tests. If everyone played by the rules, it would make the war of spam easier to identify spam. 9. There are more and more companies and individuals who acquire Exchange (or any other e-mail servers) with the intent on having their own e-mail server and e-mail with out little or no knowledge of what it actually takes to operate an e-mail server on the Internet. This leads to problems down the road, which they then turn to sources like this list in search of quick fixes when research before hand would have prevented or lessened the problem. 10. As an Exchange community service, I am going to be putting together a list of sorts for persons/entities interested in operating an e-mail server of things they need to be aware of and research on. This may take some time as I am severely back logged on work right now. John Tolmachoff Engineer/Consultant/Owner eServices For You ------------------------------------------------------ List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp Exchange FAQ: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/larticle.asp?type=FAQ ------------------------------------------------------ Other Internet Software Marketing Sites: Leading Network Software Directory: http://www.serverfiles.com No.1 ISA Server Resource Site: http://www.isaserver.org Windows Security Resource Site: http://www.windowsecurity.com/ Network Security Library: http://www.secinf.net/ Windows 2000/NT Fax Solutions: http://www.ntfaxfaq.com ------------------------------------------------------