I found out that our outgoing SMTP servers have been blocked by
the msn.com MXes. In a nasty way, too -- no SMTP error, the TCP
connection is simply closed by them immidiately after establishing it.
We're not listed on any RBL/DNSBL and have an active abuse desk.
I mailed postmaster@msn.com, msnhst@msn.com, noc@microsoft.com,
but didn't get a reply from any of them. Does anyone here know
who to talk to ?
Thanks,
Mike.
Miquel van Smoorenburg(miquels@cistron.nl)@2003.01.28 11:49:16 +0000:
I found out that our outgoing SMTP servers have been blocked by
the msn.com MXes. In a nasty way, too -- no SMTP error, the TCP
connection is simply closed by them immidiately after establishing it.
We're not listed on any RBL/DNSBL and have an active abuse desk.
Miquel, does this problem still endure? I had such a thing quite a while
ago (mid-2002) with them, but apparently it was a temporary problem of
their MX in servers. I am also not listed in RBLs (due to pretty
restrictive relaying policy) and the like, I was also _not_ able to reach
someone at their end (postmaster@msn.com). After several hours of closed
sockets, everything just worked again.
Right now, our mail to msn.com goes via smtp-gw-4.msn.com(207.46.181.13)
which appears to work:
220 cpimssmtpa19.msn.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 5.0.2195.4905 ready at Tue, 28 Jan 2003 06:09:46 -0800
Apparently their service runs on some successor of Win2000, so I
wouldn't be very surprised, if it turned out to be resource shortage on
their end (WRT things like The Worm Of The Week[tm] and the like).
A misconfigured proxy or load balancing device might be another option.
Also, their clock is off by approx. five minutes. Their system
apparently lacks NTP support, or the clocks in Redmond are 5 minutes
behind the rest of the world... :->
Oh no - not-so-funny - they got different clock drift for every
machine (cpimssmtpa[01..40].msn.com) that happens to pop up when
connecting to their best preference MX.
Looks like they DNS-loadbalance their loadbalancers for SMTP, too. Funny.
Regards,
/k[Ok-I-am-silent-now]arsten
I'd be interested in knowing what you find out. We observed the same
thing a while ago from one of our mail servers-- but just one.
Connection drops immediately, no clue given as to why. However, from
another mail server just a few IP numbers away (in the same /24), the
connection goes through just fine. The workaround was obviously to
configure the first mail server to relay mail for msn.com via the
second one, and to try to get Microsoft to tell us what was up. No
luck on that last front though.
-mm-
I'm actually dealing with the same issue as we speak. Out of racks of
web servers doing shared hosting, MSN decided to block the eth0 on one
of our Linux boxes. I called a friend and was given a direct number to
level 3 MSN technical support; they are the last tier of support you can
speak to about technical issues as they forward everything via email to
the MSN NOC.
Tier 3 support #: 877.606.9433
I spent sometime on the phone with an engineer (?) Jerry (Gerald) Jones
at the above number. If you'd like you can reference my ticket number
(103316949), which should have numerous comments on it and all the
details concerning the SMTP relay issue at hand.
FYI: MSN's email addresses are useless; I tried NOC@, Postmaster@,
Network@ & Abuse@ to no avail.
Hope this helps. Still waiting for the issue to be resolved though,
ticket was created 4+ hours ago.
Todd Mitchell
ProNIC Solutions