Request for assistance

[cmeyer at MIT.EDU (Chris Meyer)]

 > Don't know SMTP.  My P-t-P connection changes dynamically.  Also
 > I suspect their main machine is filtered to exclude traffic not
 > from their mailservers.  Is there a way to make their system
 > think I'm running Windows?

I'd be surprised if they go to that much trouble to block out 
non-Win/Mac clients, personally.

The easiest way to determine where the problem might lie is, as John 
said, to connect directly to the SMTP server and see what you can do--it 
really is a fairly trivial task (there's a reason it's called _Simple_ 
mail transfer protocol ;). Here's the basics of what to do:

Telnet to the SMTP host, port 25. You should be greeted with something 
along the lines of "220 SMTPhost.foo.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.11.6/8.11.6; 
Tue, 17 Dec 2002 12:42:32 -0500"

Type in "HELO" (or "EHLO") followed by your server name or IP address, 
e.g. "HELO bar.anywhere.net" This tells the SMTP server where you're 
coming from--if it's really your address or name that's being filtered, 
this is where the server should barf something back at you denying you 
access.

Now you can look at the commands you have access to by typing "HELP". 
Or, the simplest way, just type in something close to the following:

MAIL FROM: <youraddress at somewhere.net>      [From: header, obviously]
RCPT TO: <youraddress at somewhere.net>      [To: line, obviously; note 
that you just type the address in both of the above as-is, no brackets 
or anything]
DATA                                 [Hit enter here]
subject: this is a subject line  [hit enter twice after the subject]

This is the body of a message. You can type whatever you want here.
.             [A period on a line by itself tells the server to send it]

And if everything is working on their end, it should send a message to 
the address you specified that says "This is the body of a message. You 
can type whatever you want here." If it does get through, it probably 
means there's a problem somewhere in your configurations.

-Chris