Helping a friend change computers, we found that the email login did not work, and after a series of conversations with the provider were told to log in to get messages using
*@mydomain.com
This did indeed work, and the effect appears to be that mail sent to any name at mydomain.com is picked up by the login, and also that any name used results in mail being accepted. So for instance you can apparently send to
alexander@mydomain.com bacchus@mydomain.com calypso@mydomain.com
and so on, and it will all arrive when you log in for messages as *@mydomain.com.
Why would anyone set up an email system like this? Does it not make a lot more sense to have specific email addresses, both to reduce spam, and to allow you to segregate, for instance, home and business email?
This is the same case where there was the incomprehensible networking with two cards and class B addresses for a three machine network. When set up in the usual way with a five port router modem, it all worked perfectly fine with a lot fewer cables. Very strange.
Peter