Hi Folks;

I have a question that's not necessarily Exchange related - but I'm hoping
someone can give advice on how to solve my email problems.

I run a website with an on-line forum that requires users to register via
email. This is done to ensure no posting of garbage takes place I never
send spam, my current snmp mail server won't relay - and did I mention that
I don't send spam?

OK the problem is this. At least 100 registration emails don't go through
each month as well as topic update notifications. This is starting to annoy
the people who use my forums. I need to get a much higher percentage of the
mail through.

The reason a portion is not going through is because;

1) My ISP has assigned me static business IP addresses that are listed as
dynamic by many SPAM lists.
2) My ISP's IP address sets have aribtrarily blacklisted by SPEWS. The
entire set and I think it's several million IP addresses! SPEWS just
aribitrarily listed every address atrtibuted to my ISP.
3) My ISP's solution to this is not to contact SPEWS - it's to provide a
private mail server for their business clients
4) The problem with this solution is that their mail server is a slug, mail
delivery seems to que until the cows come home and for whatever reason (the
IP of that server is NOT blacklisted) mail delivery seems haphazard at best
with a lot of the mail not arriving.

As a result, running my own SNMP server is lightning fast - mail deivery is
instant but a few domains won't receiver mail - either because the IP's are
blacklisted or because the IP's are supposed to be dynamic.

I guess what I need is 2 virgin IP address sets that have never seen use on
the Internet My ISP cannot give me IP's outside of what's allotted. They
are large and I assume their network is laid out specifically one way and
they don't want to mess with it.

How can I get my mail through? I work hard to make my site/forums a great
resource for people - for free. I get a small amount of advertising revenue
for tasteful ads that offsets the WAN link costs and makes payments on the
credit line that paid for the servers. I want my site to grow - it is and
I'm working hard to do it. But if my mail doesn't go through it stifles the
growth of my site - a lot. So I don't get as good a return on my efforts.

I don't send spam. Every once in a while I send out a 'mass' email to all my
members letting them know what's new. They can opt out with a couple of
mouse clicks. I'm not deceptive, manipulative or a nut. When I do a mass
email (I've only done 3 in 4 years) I'm sending 6,000 emails. On a typical
day my forums probably send 100 emails - all of them either registration
validations or topic update notifications. They are all legit emails.

How can I get it down to the point where all email goes through with the
exception of people that have inadvertantly set their Spam filters so
restrictive that they couldn't get mail if their life depended on it?

BTW, I am currently using IIS5's SMTP server although I do have an Exchange
2000 server on the backburner that I'm going to fire up as soon as I get a
chance.

Best & Thanks!
Marvin

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