So, I'm staying at the Double Tree Guest Suites in Downers Grove. One attaction (a key attaction) was that they have broadband. Now, I interpreted that to mean they had broadbad. What they really mean is that they have slow-speed WiFi access at $10 / day (I knew about the rat). Even with excellent connectivity I'm getting iMb/minute rates.

Also, like the XV Beacon in Boston, the I/T folks here thought they'd be helpful and filter port 25. Port 25 is used by 99.999% of the mailers in the world to transmit (rather than receive mail). Here they intercept it and redirect it to their own mail relay.

The problem is two fold: one, this is an unexpected behavour (it's not documented anyhere that I can find). Two, if you are configured to use authenticated SMTP to send mail, you will get all sorts of errors appearing to be from your mail relay asking you to change your password.

In reality you're getting the error messages from the hotel system. Since the hotel system doesn't known about your userid/password for authenticated SMTP, it rejects the request, but with headers that make the error appear to be from your ISP, not the hotel's ISP.

I managed to create a workaround: I set up an ssh tunnel to the Mac G4 in Brooklyn. I forward localhost:25 traffic to pittsburgh.gothic-egg.net:25 and it seems to work.