Here is a PHP class written for PHP4 and PHP5 that will validate email addresses by querying the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server. This is meant to complement validation of the syntax of the email address, which should be used before validating the email via SMTP, which is more resource and time consuming.
For more information read this thread:
http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread141944.html
Documentation and updates:
http://onwebdevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/08/php-email-address-validation-through.html
Source code:
Source code has been moved:
http://code.google.com/p/php-smtp-email-validation/