AtomicInternet Archived News

At work today our emails for orders, returns, and all sorts of other important things stopped sending. Fearing the worst, I checked all our configuration files and they all seemed in order. Still email wasn't going through, so remembering you can telnet to an SMTP server I quickly ran "telnet smtp 25" from our server and was greeted with a prompt. I followed instructions in this link and discovered first hand how SMTP really is a simple mail transfer protocol. Trivial for some, unexciting for most, but something noteworthy for me. My lack of an email confirmed the server had a stuck queue but an hour later I got my very first telnet email and celebrated with a Mountain Dew.