Ross,
There are a lot of knowledgeable people on this list [tier 3].
Why can't you already tell if you aren't getting through to
major providers? Wouldn't your queues backup, or are you being
blocked and the messages are being rejected and you are trying
to track that?
-M<
I find it interesting that you'd like pop3 access to a bunch of listed
*webmail* providers. Who provide access via the web - NOT pop3.
I also agree with the below statement - your mail queues themselves will
provide far more accurate information.
The issue of 'successful mail delivery' would be a support issue, not an
operations issue, as long as you as an operations staffer can verify that
your mailserver is not holding the mail for undue periods. (Mail doesnt
have a delivery SLA in general, after all.)
And if your support staff need offsite mail accounts to verify delivery
delay times, they should be able to purchase them or otherwise obtain
them, and keep a database of mail account access details that they can use
*on demand*. This would of course entail them becoming customers and
footing the regular monthly bill, or whatever.
In every ISP i've ever worked for, all we've needed to do is verify that
we're delivering the mail to the advertised MX in a timely fashion, and
our responsibility ends at that point.
Outside of the usual responsibilities of a good ISP - like providing
responsive abuse/security staff, like providing a valid abuse@ contact 
This would be one of the primary reasons your mail doesn't get accepted,
and prevention is better than cure...
So in all honesty - if your company wants to extend its monitoring-ability
outside of its own network to those of other providers, it should do so in
the 'usual fashion' - sign up. How is this something that yourself as an
operations employee got involved in anyway, as it strikes me as a support
issue?
- Mark.
Why can't you already tell if you aren't getting through to
major providers? Wouldn't your queues backup, or are you being
blocked and the messages are being rejected and you are trying
to track that?
It is all in the mail logs. Here is a quick hack to take a peak at your mail
queue (for sendmail)
& it should not be hard to get provider names that are backed up in your
queue:
#!/bin/sh
# Do the Mqueues
ls -d /var/spool/mqueue* | while read queue_name
do
total=`(cd $queue_name ; find . -name 'q*' -print | wc -l )`
deferred=`(cd $queue_name ; find . -name 'q*' -exec grep MDeferred
"{}" ";" | wc -l )`
deferred=`echo "$deferred 2 / p " | dc`
deferred_400=`(cd $queue_name ; find . -name 'q*' -exec egrep -e
'MDeferred: 4[0-9][0-9]' "{}" ";" | wc -l )`
deferred_400=`echo "$deferred_400 2 / p " | dc`
deferred_refused=`(cd $queue_name ; find . -name 'q*' -exec egrep -e
'MDeferred: Connection refused' "{}" ";" | wc -l )`
deferred_refused=`echo "$deferred_refused 2 / p " | dc`
deferred_reset=`(cd $queue_name ; find . -name 'q*' -exec egrep -e
'MDeferred: Connection reset' "{}" ";" | wc -l )`
deferred_reset=`echo "$deferred_reset 2 / p " | dc`
deferred_timeout=`(cd $queue_name ; find . -name 'q*' -exec egrep -e
'MDeferred: Connection timed out' "{}" ";" | wc -l )`
deferred_timeout=`echo "$deferred_timeout 2 / p " | dc`
echo
"===========================================================================
"
echo "Stats for: $queue_name"
echo "Total messages in queue : $total"
echo "Total messages in deferred: $deferred"
echo "Total messages 400 error: $deferred_400"
echo "Total messages conn. refused: $deferred_refused"
echo "Total messages conn. reset: $deferred_reset"
echo "Total messages conn. timeout: $deferred_timeout"
echo "Total messages deferred other: `echo "$deferred_400
$deferred_refused $deferred_reset $deferred_timeout $total - - - - p" | dc`"
echo
"===========================================================================
"
done
Quite a few of them provide pop3 access - all you have to do is to haul
out your credit card and pay for a premium account
gmail and hotmail dont.
The rest of what you describe can be easily hacked into netsaint / nagyos
etc - monitoring for mail delays is easy. Parsing the reason for why it
got delayed is a whole different kettle of fish.