Connection, Please

I haven't been able to send email through my account with DHP in the past week or so. I thought it was a problem with my IP address or something; I emailed them and basically said, what's up? They replied that the IP they had on file matched the one that I told them I was at now, and that the problem wasn't on their end. Today, I got an email from a member of the geek community on campus:

In case you haven't noticed, GEEK hasn't been getting that much traffic
lately.  Maybe you have noticed that JMU has turned off all SMTP
traffic in and out of JMU except for a few specific hosts.

JMU has a new UNDOCUMENTED policy that states there will be no
unapproved mail servers on JMU's network. [0]  All email has to be
authenticated through the mail gateway run by the systems group.

While this policy does prevent spam, it hurts a large number of
people.  Users of Geek is are included.

Many students use personal mail servers, ISPs, and machines within JMU
to send outbound email.  These are all blocked now.  Users are no
longer allowed to use the ISP that they use at home to send mail, they
must use JMU's email server.  [1]  This policy also stops any JMU
servers from running their own mail server and mailing lists.  

Thats why GEEK has been dead.  For many of us, Ruff has been our main
email account for many years.  Our user policy states that users may
keep their account after they leave JMU if they have setup
arrangements with the sysadmins.  Many of us 'geek' (including myself) 
have done this.  Out of the 13 'ruff' accounts that are subscribed to
geek, 7 of them are for people no longer at JMU.  4 of them are
seniors getting ready to leave.

Ruff is a student run Unix server.  It has been a great resource for a
number of geeks.  Many of the ruff user list have gone on to doing
things with Unix, one of them even got hired at JMU working for the
systems group.  Where would this user community be without a place
that users run the system?   I doubt they have got as far without that
knowledge.

Mike Kelly (current ruff admin) is working hard fighting for Ruff and
Ruff's email status, but the administration is not listening.  

This email has two points.  

One, to let you know what is going on.  I find it very disconcerting
that JMU IT has not let their users [2] know about major changes to the 
network that have disrupted service to so many users.  Everyone that
has been adversely affected should communicate their unhappiness to JMU's
IT department through whatever means [3] necessary to get your point
across that this policy is very disruptive and that the lack of
announcement to a major change in policy is so disconcerting.

Two, to let you know that Mike is working on it.  We should all say
thanks to Mike Kelly who is fighting so hard to get some sort of
access for ruff (and therefor geek) extended for at least a short
period of time to allow its users to move their mail accounts to a
system/network where email is allowed.  His fight is not going so
well.  He is working on getting a good replacement mailing list for
geek, but it may or may not be hosted by JMU IT [4].  If and when
something happens, Mike will let you know.  
 
-- 
I beg your pardon. What do you mean I'm naked?

[0] - A locked down student run mail servers don't seem to fall under 
      that approval, yet an unsecured NT mail server (cisat.jmu.edu) does.
[1] - This also stops users from running their own mail server.  Many
      of us know what we know because we were allowed to experiment.
      If JMU blocks services that have VALID uses, then how are we to 
      experiment and learn?
[2] - Sure, they asked the departments, but last time I checked,
      students account for more than 75% of the users at JMU
[3] - Legal please.  It won't help the situation to deface www.jmu.edu
      in protest.  
[4] - Personally, JMU IT doesn't give me a good feeling about how they 
      deal with 'users'.  How do we know they will be responsive when
      we have additional needs that they do not already meet since we 
      "are just students"?

Well, there's my problem. I was pretty shocked; I suppose I still am. I sent an email to JMU IT:

I've had a hard time tracking down the email address of someone in the JMU IT department. Yours was listed with a computing announcement, so if this is wrong, please let me know who I should be talking to.

I've had problems for the past week sending email through an email account that I keep separate from my JMU mail. They authenticate connections to their SMTP server by IP address, so I initially thought there were DHCP issues and my IP had changed. Turned out that their records of my IP are correct, but I still cannot connect to the server.

Today I received an email from a member of the JMU GEEK list stating that JMU IT has unilaterally shut down all incoming and outgoing SMTP traffic. This is a problem, as I pay for the outside email account to relieve quota issues I have had in the past (I am a member of several mailing lists, and my mailbox tends to fill up quicker than most).

What can be done to gain access to SMTP traffic again? Thank you for you assistance in this matter.

AJS

Scary situation here; let's see what goes down.

March 20, 2002 - 11:19 PM