The Perpetual Search for the Right (Inter)National ISP?

dirk asks: "We are currently in the market for a national (or even better international) ISP. We were using Prodigy, until they decided that we shouldn't be able to connect to SMTP servers other than their own (and a major function of our business is email, which must be done through our corporate mail servers). We have about 25 people who travel regularly and need to send and receive email. They connect about an hour a day. We really don't want to get each person a separate account, since their individual usage is so small. What we are looking for a national (or international) ISP who will allow us to connect to our SMTP server to send email, not cost us an arm and a leg, and allow us to have multiple people use the same account (if possible). People usually won't be on at the same time, but if they happen to coincide, we don't want someone getting booting in the middle of a session. Anyone know of anything even approaching this kind of beast?"

Comments

Some answers

[haplo21112]

1. Compuserve, works pretty well for this and is fairly inexpensive, very much international
2. A little higher scale is UUNET Pal,(its on the Compuserve network actually), again very much international
3. Ok, this one will probably get me Trolled, but YES AOL is a potential Option for you they will let you pick up mail from other SMTP servers. and there is international access.
4. AT&T Worldnet should also be considered, I do not know the full extent of the network however.
5. Agian I'll get trolled, but you could also consider MSN.

Re:Some answers

[dirk]

1. Compuserve, works pretty well for this and is fairly inexpensive, very much international
2. A little higher scale is UUNET Pal,(its on the Compuserve network actually), again very much international
3. Ok, this one will probably get me Trolled, but YES AOL is a potential Option for you they will let you pick up mail from other SMTP servers. and there is international access.
4. AT&T Worldnet should also be considered, I do not know the full extent of the network however.
5. Agian I'll get trolled, but you could also consider MSN

Well, here's what we found out since I submitted this.

MSN is out. Even though their tech support told us they support connecting to other SMTP servers, once we made an account we found out they didn't. And the funny part is they suggested instead of cancelling we send mail through MSN messenger.

AT&T WorldNet looks very nice. They do allow connection to outside SMTP servers, but only after the account is active for a month (to filter out spammers).

Didn't check out Compuserve, but certainly will.

AOL does allow this stuff, but they have changed their policy so that if a second user logs in the first one is booted. This is not a viable option, because then you get into users who keep booting each other continuously (at least with our users you would).

UUNet is one I like a lot, but they are EXPENSIVE. 100 bucks a month for an account. And my boss is cheap.

It looks like we may have found a resolution with Prodigy finally, but that doesn't mean we aren't going to switch after it taking over a week and three email to even get someone to listen to our problem.

So much for Karma...

[clark625]

Okay, I'm probably not winning any points with anyone here; but I believe that it's not very important what ISP individuals use in the field. My previous employer allowed the field consultants to choose whatever ISP they desired, with the first $25 per month picked up by the company. To deal with the corporate e-mail, we just simply made entries into the "alias" file for sendmail. Most ISPs will allow the relay of e-mail (by domain) so long as the sender is connecting from inside their network. This means that our consultants could even send e-mail that "looked" like it came from our SMTP server; even though it really was send direct from the consultant's ISP.
Another great feature of having this flexibility with the field consultants is that they can individually pick the ISP they like and trust. If a consultant wishes to have broadband, then it's not a problem either. Face it, no single ISP can offer everything your field personnel need and want in their own (personal) lives. Might as well let them enjoy the 'net when they aren't working.

Not exactly what you are asking but . . .

[pete-classic]

I am a huge fan of the concept of webmail, particularly IMAP based webmail, because your messages don't get "stuck" in the webmail client('s database). In other words, just because you view a message in SquirrelMail</plug> today, doesn't mean you can't reply to it in Mozilla Mail tomorrow.

And it works from any box with access to your webserver (use of SSL is highly recommended).

Doesn't answer the ISP question, I know, but might be an answer to your SMTP woes.

-Peter

Try equant

[anticypher]

Equant is the customer facing part of SITA, and they have a pretty extensive international network. Its the only network with a presence in every country in the world.

They have dial-in points in pretty much every country, and can allow your roamers to set up VPNs back to your firewall. They offer crypto-card services and other geeky things for security.

If your boss is as cheap as you say, then stick with a bunch of AOL accounts. Real ISPs who allow their customers to act like professionals cost more money than the clueless discount ISPs or AOLs of the world. Let your boss know that the image your customers see is directly proportional to the budget you have to work with, and if he can run the business without customers, there are a bunch of dotbombs who would love to hire him (for stock options only, of course).

the AC

SSH Tunnels

[dead_penguin]

Why not just use ssh port forwarding (tunneling) to connect to the remote mail server? If the boxes dialing in to the isp are some variant of unix, it's as simple as:

ssh -l user@host -L localport:mailserver:25

and then configuring the client software to connect to the localhost at localport for sending mail. Most windows ssh clients will let you do the same thing (somehow).

Of course, this is assuming that the mail server you're wanting to connect to is actually *yours*, or at the least you can get it set up to allow incoming ssh and port forwarding. If it all works, though, as an added bonus all of your communication between the dialup host and your mail server will be encrypted.

How about a simpler solution.

[duffbeer703]

Keep using whatever ISP you use now, and run a POP daemon on port 80 or some other port.