Martin Klingensmith wrote:
> Most residential service blocks port 25 (SMTP) incoming. You can't 
> really do email over a home connection, nor can I understand why you 
> would seriously want to.
> --
> Martin K

Some also block port 25 outbound for "normal" residential connections, 
and those of us running mail servers appreciate that.  There needs to be 
some "barrier to entry" beyond just setting a mail server up, usually 
incorrectly as an open relay, and then allowing your box to spam the 
world, once the bad guys find it.  But... that said, the "barrier" is 
low... a couple of bucks a month for a static (real) routable IP address 
is available from most carriers these days, without port restrictions.

I can answer the question with my own reasons, your goals might be 
different.  I've had my own server for going on something like 10 years 
now, through multiple ISP's, etc.  I always pay the extra price to have 
real routable IP addresses, and then run my own stuff.

A few reasons:
- It's the way the Internet started, the way I started, and I'm used to it.
- I'm a Unix admin for a living.  I have no problems dealing with 
setting up my own equipment to do what I want.
- No worries that my provider is going to go out of business, raise 
prices, or decide not to fix something for a while when it's borked.
- My responsibility, done on my time.
- IMAP Server - This is probably the best part.  Long before commercial 
vendors offered cheap/reasonable IMAP hosting, I had IMAP and every 
single one of my mail clients from the command line (mutt) to 
Thunderbird on the PeeeCeeee's to Mail.App on the Macs... and even the 
webmail app (mailman), all "see" the same view of my e-mail.
- Back to the IMAP thing, kinda... server-side filters.  All of my 
mailing lists and other non-personal "traffic" automatically gets put 
into folders under the IMAP Inbox.  I don't have to sort/file anything 
once I set up my procmail rules correctly on the server for my user.
- Helping friends out.  Numerous times, friends have complained that 
their ISP won't allow large file attachments in e-mail.  I can offer 
them a temporary e-mail account on the server in about 10 seconds if I'm 
at a computer with Net access (remote management via SSH, of course), or 
let them use the WebDAV, FTP, or even SCP files to the box and off of it.
- The server does multiple duty -- it has the webserver, and other 
things for other "organizations" and personal projects hosted virtually. 
   These can be added/removed at will.

Basically -- if you take the time to learn how to properly secure a 
public server, and then take a minimal amount of up-front time to set it 
up properly (spamassassin, clamav, etc... all the things a "provider" 
would do), you end up "in control of your own destiny", so to speak.

Add in that you'll probably make a few friends in the process of 
learning, and those friends might be willing to act as secondary DNS or 
mail for you, etc... you can build just as good a system as any 
provider, and all you have invested is the extra few bucks a month for a 
"real" IP address or two, and you learned a hell of a lot more than the 
average joe about how the Net works.

It was easier to do this over the years, learning as things changed (the 
advent of spam, etc), but it's not insurmountable today.

Nate
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