The situation is:

SuSE 10.2 server with sendmail (8.13), MailScanner (with f-prot, clamav and bitdefender antivirus) and Spamassassin, for IMAPs and POP3s i use the default services under xinetd (I used dovecot but had troubles setting up IMAPs and POP3s so I removed it)

I am trying to secure my mail traffic. I implemented successfully POP3s. Now i'm trying to implement SMTP AUTH + TLS. I've compiled sendmail as a TLS server, when i run "telnet localhost 25" and give it an "ehlo" i can see that TLS is available, also AUTH. I am not convinced, so I check again with "sendmail -d0.1 -bv root" and I can see there "SASLv2" So, I am getting excited and I try "starttls" after telnet on localhost. My beauty responds with an " 2.0.0 ready to start tls". I am already happy and i try talking with her : "ehlo localhost" And there she goes... conection is closed without warnings.
I am trying to understand what's happening and give it a try with "sendmail -O LogLevel=14 -bs -Am" and after look into the mail log and here is what I get:

Apr 2 14:52:11 suse sendmail[23845]: NOQUEUE: connect from root@localhost
Apr 2 14:52:11 suse sendmail[23845]: STARTTLS=server, Diffie-Hellman init, key=512 bit (1)
Apr 2 14:52:11 suse sendmail[23845]: STARTTLS=server, init=1
Apr 2 14:52:11 suse sendmail[23845]: AUTH: available mech=CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5 PLAIN LOGIN ANONYMOUS GSSAPI, allowed mech=PLAIN LOGIN GSSAPI
Apr 2 14:52:11 suse sendmail[23845]: l32BqB24023845: Milter: no active filter
Apr 2 14:52:40 suse sendmail[23845]: STARTTLS=server, error: accept failed=-1, SSL_error=1, errno=0, retry=-1
Apr 2 14:52:40 suse sendmail[23845]: STARTTLS=server: 23845:error:140760FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_CLIENT_HELLO:unknown protocol:s23_srvr.c:562:
Apr 2 14:52:40 suse sendmail[23845]: l32BqB24023845: root@localhost did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to stdin

I am not a linux guru, i am a little bit more than a newbie. Can someone help ? pls pls pls

clearly NOT a members intro. moved to Linux - Server.