Explanations

Mail Exchanger Record (MX)

Mail Exchanger Record is a kind of record in DNS. The purpose of MX record is to declare which is the responsible smtp service for a domain. Due to MX record, MTA (Mail Transport Agent = Mail Server) will connect to valid smtp server to send mail to its local user.

SMTP

Short for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, a protocol for sending e-mail messages between servers. Most e-mail systems that send mail over the Internet use SMTP to send messages from one server to another; the messages can then be retrieved with an e-mail client using either POP or IMAP. In addition, SMTP is generally used to send messages from a mail client to a mail server. This is why you need to specify both the POP or IMAP server and the SMTP server when you configure your e-mail application.

POP

Short for Post Office Protocol, a protocol used to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Most e-mail applications (sometimes called an e-mail client) use the POP protocol, although some can use the newer IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol).

Relay

Relay means sending mail to third party via smtp server.

Open Relay

Open Relay means the relay of smtp server is OPEN for anyone; It is available to use for everyone in the internet. It also means your server might help spammers to send their unsolicited mails to others. Basically, OPEN Relay is a BAD thing.

SMTP AUTH

SMTP Auth means user can provide his username/password to pass authentication checking while sending mail via smtp server.
You can enable this function in your mail client application, such as outlook express, you can find "My server needs authentication" option in account setting.

Spam

Electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. However, if a long-lost brother finds your e-mail address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it's unsolicited. Real spam is generally e-mail advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.

Anti-Spam: Reverse checking

Reverse checking of RaidenMAILD can check source IP is in MX servers of sender domain or not. Besides, raidenmaild will also check SPF of sender domain.

Anti-Spam: RBL checking

Short for Realtime Blackhole List, a list of IP addresses whose owners refuse to stop the proliferation of spam. The RBL usually lists server IP addresses from ISPs whose customers are responsible for the spam and from ISPs whose servers are hijacked for spam relay.

Anti-Spam: Greylisting

Greylisting is a new method of blocking significant amounts of spam at the mailserver level, but without resorting to heavyweight statistical analysis or other heuristical (and error-prone) approaches. Consequently, implementations are fairly lightweight, and may even decrease network traffic and processor load on your mailserver.
For more details about greylisting, please refer this page http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/index.html

Anti-Spam: ISV

Short for Interactive Sender Verification, the mechanism will send verification mail to the sender to confirm his identity.
If the sender is a real person and it is valid email address, he can receive this mail and read it and input the content inside the image to confirm his email address to be a valid sender email address for recipient. Then his email will be added into recipient's white list and the sender will not need to do the verify again as long as his email address is still in recipient's white list. After verification is done, the mail will move from unsolicited folder to recipient mailbox.

MultiPOP

MultiPOP provides your user to receive external mail from his other POP mailbox into his mailbox.

Server Relay

Server relay allows you to define which specific domain going to which specific smtp server, if you have smtp virus gateway software/hardware, you will need this function to route your mail through the gateway.

Thanks for your reading.

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Last update : 2006/06/13