Yet another telnet to 25 on AWS EC2 not working - amazon-ec2

Question

I went through all these error questions that I could find on SO and I've done everything that it appears I should do. Still, I get connection refused when I telnet to port 25
This is what is asked for in other questions:
netstat-an | grep LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:53045 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:3306 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 :::111 :::* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 :::80 :::* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 :::22 :::* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 :::443 :::* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 :::52266 :::* LISTEN
So, port 25 is listening. Next, can I telnet to 25 on localhost? Yes. No problem. I can do localhost and I can do it with 127.0.0.1 and I can do it with the proper IP address. As long as I am on the machine itself, I can telnet to port 25.
Next, the EC2 firewall. There are two levels, iptables and the EC2 security zone. I made sure iptables and ip6tables were shut down. Service shows that both are "Firewall is not running". I checked the EC2 security zone. It shows:
25 tcp 0.0.0.0/0
So, it is allowing all traffic to port 25.
Still, I get connection refused when I telnet to port 25.
I continued. I checked /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny. Both are empty.
I continued. I looked in the mail folder. The domain is in local-host-names (which doesn't matter since I never get to the point of entering a recipient email address). I don't see anything about blocking or allowing hosts. Perhaps there is something buried in the cryptic sendmail.cf file. So, I wanted to ensure that sendmail was definitely listening with
lsof -i :25
COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
sendmail 11457 root 4u IPv4 830292 0t0 TCP *:smtp (LISTEN)
Same as netstat. Listening on all devices on port smtp (25).
So, I am at a loss. Why would I get connection refused on port 25? It isn't unable to reach server. It isn't that it is not listening. It is clearly that it is listening and refusing connections.

Answer 1

The problem here is that there are two issues:
1) Many ISPs block outbound port 25 requests. So, it is rather common that telnet somedomain.com 25 will fail and report something like "denied" or "unreachable."
2) Proper programs that go out on port 25 are mail programs. A mail program is designed to send email to your email service, which then uses the MX record for the domain name to deliver the email. What I found is that when you register a domain name with Network Solutions and set "All" IP addresses to be a certain address, they do NOT set the MX record address. That remains set to Network Solutions' mail server. So, if someone uses a proper email program to hit your domain name, it will go to mx.yourdomain.com, which may not be your server.
In my case, I had to manually set the IP address for the mx record with Network Solutions. Then, I magically started getting emails.
For those that don't know how to check MX records, in Linux, you can run dig domain.name MX. However, it isn't your MX record setting that matters. It is your mail server's setting. For example, if my computer says the mx record is 12.34.56.78 and I use GMail and Google says the mx record is p.ctmail.com, then sending email through GMail will fail.