Microsoft Exchange and Remote Desktop Services Specialists

SEMblog

Microsoft Exchange Server and
Blackberry Enterprise Server news, views and fixes.

Experiences with Grey Listing

I have heard from many sources that grey listing can be an effective weapon for fighting spam, yet hadn't had an opportunity to try it out. However one of my clients was being hammered hard with spam, with 700+ messages a day being filtered by Intelligent Message Filter, and lots of messages getting past "I Hate Spam" from Sunbelt Software. Therefore I thought they would be a good site to test th... [More]

Internet Service Separation

One of the tactics I have been using with my clients for many years is something I call internet service separation. This is where I use different providers for different aspects of the internet service that the client needs.  This doesn't go down well with many internet companies (whether this is Internet service providers, web hosts etc). They like to have control over everything, get ... [More]

Three Rules of Microsoft Licensing

I have been posting these three rules of software licensing in various forums for a couple of years now, so it made sense to include them here. Purchasing software licenses for Microsoft products is daunting, with multiple choices and schemes available to you. However as long as you consider these three rules, you shouldn't go too far wrong. Get at least three opinions, including one from Micro... [More]

VPN Through a PIX

Stuck out on site with a client, I couldn't connect to home via VPN. The client has a Cisco PIX and a quick bit of research showed that while the PIX will allow PPTP pass-through, it isn't enabled by default. Apparently you need 6.3 of the PIX software, but then you can add the following command to the configuration and can then use the Windows VPN client: fixup protocol pptp 1723 A q... [More]

Why you shouldn't use Self Generated SSL Certificates

A constant theme on many of the Internet forums is the use of self generated SSL certificates versus purchased SSL certificates, particularly when deploying RPC over HTTPS or Outlook Web Access. Many people will advocate that using a self generated certificate is fine and will do the job. This could be a certificate generated from the selfssl.exe tool that is supplied with the IIS Resource Kit, or... [More]