As of today, the local cable utility monopoly has decided to block outgoing port 25 in our neighborhood. Strange it took them this long - but it means sending email suddenly became a bit of a problem this morning, because we are in that “technically savvy” minority that owns their own off-site mail server.

I initially thought this should motivate me to get SMTP running over SSL on my mail server (POP3 already is), but Plesk makes life more complicated for the admin, as usual. Then I came across a knowledgebase article at mediatemple that helped get xinetd to listen on a non-standard port that Comcast is not so concerned with, an inferior but much easier solution. It was so easy I felt I should write a blog entry to make up for saved time.