XPost: alt.comp.software.thunderbird   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Mon, 2/23/2026 8:20 PM, Char Jackson wrote:   
      
   >   
   > refers exclusively to *inbound* traffic   
      
   > On a related note, I haven't seen a port 25 SMTP server in many years.   
   > They seem to have moved to port 465 or 587, depending on the encryption   
   > protocol being used.   
      
   The person in the newsgroup who was doing the Port 25 *inbound* test   
   and Port 1025 (or any-port) *inbound* test, was doing this before   
   SSL/TLS, so this was some time ago. He was not contacted by our   
   common ISP tech support, he received no nastygram about his   
   activities, and the port (whatever port he tried to shove   
   SMTP traffic into from the outside world) would close for 15 minutes   
   (900 seconds) and open and allow any legit protocol to use the   
   port again afterwards.   
      
   The reason I valued that post, is it was naive to ever expect inbound   
   to work, but the extra detail of it being blocked on *any* port,   
   the port opening and closing like a mechanical door, that impressed   
   the hell out of me. Doing something like that at scale. Like pampering   
   three million users at that level of detail.   
      
   Based on the effectiveness of the Chinese firewall, I expect given   
   the incentive, a DPI box can interfere with just about anything.   
   It just runs slower to do that. The beauty of the first generation   
   of DPI box, is it was doing these things at wirespeed. I doubt   
   all the intervention capabilities available today run at wirespeed   
   but it just doesn't matter as long as the boxes are at the edge   
   of the network for at least some of the enforcement.   
      
   And if I haven't made this transparently obvious, in a fascist situation   
   where "government is evil", this is the perfect hardware for evil.   
   The difference between free speech and no free speech, is just a switch   
   setting away. All the hardware is there for a good time :-/   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)