Email Services
Email for Staff Webmail Login Activating your account Filtering & Forwarding Vacation message Quotas Shared folders FAQs Webmail Introduction Message Index Reading a message Compose Addresses Folders Options Search Quota information FAQs Email for Students Webmail Login Etiquette Activating your account Filtering & Forwarding Vacation message Quotas FAQs Webmail Introduction Message Index Reading a message Compose Addresses Folders Options Search Quota information FAQs Spam & Virus Server Filtering (Staff) Server Filtering (Student) Filtering with Eudora Filtering with Outlook Staff Lists Student Lists Custom Lists Configuration Usage Guide Mail Server Reg.

Mail Server Registration

Explanatory Note

Until a few years ago it was considered desirable for mail servers to have the ability to relay email. That is, to accept email messages emanating from hosts outside their own 'domain' and to pass them on to other hosts also outside their own 'domain'. This was because transmission speeds on the internet were slower than they are today and mail servers and the internet itself were less reliable. This meant that if the destination server was unavailable it was desirable to send mail messages to sites closer to the destination server. When the destination server did become available the message would have already traversed part of the route and therefore be more likely to reach the destination server.

However, with the advent of junk email many sites began blocking known sources of such messages. The senders of this type of email then resorted to routing their junk email through other sites (commonly called relaying) to avoid this blocking. This relaying capability has therefore become undesirable, at least in respect of its effect of compounding the proliferation of junk email.

The University's central email servers have been secured against email relaying in that they will not accept email from outside the university and send it straight back out again. However, if other servers within the university are not secured in the same way then it is possible for the central mail servers to become the output point of a multi-stage relay process where a server within the university accepts email from outside the university, ascertains that it is not destined for one of its own mailboxes and then passes it on to the central mail servers. These see the message as coming from within the university and so pass the message on to its (outside) destination. If all servers within the university were secured against single stage relaying this multi-stage relaying process could not occur.

The result of both single and multi-stage relaying is that some university servers and, at times, the whole university have been listed in databases of known open relays maintained by various organisations. This has had the effect that all email emanating from sites or servers listed in these databases has been rejected by other sites which refer to them and automatically block email from any listed servers or sites. Some sites which use these databases are extremely important to the proper functioning of The University of Melbourne.

The University of Melbourne through its Information Strategy Advisory Committee (ISAC) and Planning and Budgets Committee has therefore determined that it is necessary to require all mail servers on campus which are capable of receiving mail from the internet to be registered in a centrally administered database. As part of this registration process it is required that such servers be confirmed as being configured such that they will not relay email and that the postmaster alias is directed to an address which is routinely monitored. Until such registration occurs and confirmation is obtained via testing, router blocks will remain in place preventing servers from receiving mail from outside the university.

Mail Relaying Information Tests

There are various sites which maintain databases of known open mail relays. These sites maintain a great deal of information about how servers can be secured against open mail relaying as well as various testers. Some of these sites are :

The following sites has various online tools including one to check for mail relaying:

Information on securing a mail server against open mail relaying may be found at :