Those who have followed my adventures with broadband are aware that, out here in the sticks, if you want a fast Internet connection, you look to the skies — satellite broadband. I’m more than a little tickled to report that I’ve found an alternate avenue that will soon allow me to get rid of this blighted extra-terrestrial connection. But a problem remains.
This alternate avenue doesn’t provide email services — no POP or SMTP for me. POP isn’t an issue as I can download my email from any Internet connection. SMTP is a problem, however, because the ISP that hosts my personal email account (and that of my wife) doesn’t support relaying — the process of sending mail through the ISP’s SMTP server when you’re not logged directly into that account.
Thankfully there are ways around it via companies that offer relaying services. The one I chose is DynDNS.org’s MailHop Outbound. This service allows you to use its SMTP server regardless of how you’re logged onto the Web (thus making it useful when you’re on the road and your ISP puts you in a similar predicament). To keep spammers from taking advantage of the relay DynDNS limits you to a certain number of relays per day and the service is priced accordingly — $15 a year for 150 relays per day, $25 a year for 300 relays per day, and $35 a year from 450 relays per day.