Seeking clue @ Cbeyond / ASN17184 and/or other suggestions

We're having some difficulties getting a lame DNS delegation and old email hosting configuration removed from Cbeyond's servers. According to their front line tech support "We cannot work on something we do not host no more".

Jared's NOC list doesn't have anything on them, nor do they appear to participate in INOC-DBA. Additional attempts to resolve this are noted below.

The specific issues are:

1) lame authority on prosourcedenver.com:

$ dig +short ns prosourcedenver.com @beyond.cbeyond.net.
beyond.cbeyond.net.
infinity.cbeyond.net.
to.cbeyond.net.

vs:

$ dig +short ns prosourcedenver.com @c.gtld-servers.net
ns0.rockynet.com.
ns1.rockynet.com.
ns2.rockynet.com.

Front line tech support indicated this is a Registrar problem, and they would open up a ticket with Tucows to get it resolved :frowning:

I also tried sending an email to the address in the SOA:

$ dig +short soa prosourcedenver.com @beyond.cbeyond.net.
prosourcedenver.com. hostmaster.cbeyond.com. 2004042100 86400 1800 604800 3600
$

Unfortunately, that address is invalid :frowning:

<hostmaster@cbeyond.com>: host mx2.cbeyond.net[64.238.96.58] said: 550 #5.1.0
     Address rejected hostmaster@cbeyond.com (in reply to RCPT TO command)

2) The invalid MX records that Cbeyond is serving resolve to hosts that apparently believe they are authoritative for the prosourcedenver.com domain, and are in effect creating an email blackhole:

$ dig +short mx prosourcedenver.com @to.cbeyond.net.
10 mail.west.cbeyond.com.
20 smtp.atl.cbeyond.com.
$ telnet mail.west.cbeyond.com smtp
Trying 66.180.96.57...
Connected to mail.west.cbeyond.com (66.180.96.57).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mail.east.cbeyond.com ESMTP
EHLO me
250-mail.east.cbeyond.com
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE 20971520
250-STARTTLS
250-AUTH PLAIN LOGIN
250 AUTH=PLAIN LOGIN
mail from:<>
250 sender <> ok
rcpt to:<MUNGED@prosourcedenver.com>
250 recipient <MUNGED@prosourcedenver.com> ok
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
rcpt to:<anyone@anywhere.com>
550 #5.1.0 Address rejected anyone@anywhere.com
QUIT
221 mail.east.cbeyond.com
Connection closed by foreign host.
$

Email to postmaster@cbeyond.com hasn't resolved the issue either :frowning: All of the above commands have been sent to their tech support address in an attempt to convince them that the problem is with their servers, but they refuse to accept this.

Finally, as an additional note, the whois delegation for their ASN seems to be broken:

$ whois -h whois.arin.net 17184
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[Redirected to rwhois.cbeyond.net:4321]
[Querying rwhois.cbeyond.net]
[rwhois.cbeyond.net]
%rwhois V-1.5:003eff:00 rwhois.cbeyond.net (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.9.5)
%error 230 No Objects Found
$

I'm at a loss of how to proceed now, except to tell people who are suffering from the email blackhole to find another ISP. Does anyone else have any contacts with a clue, or semblance of clue, at Cbeyond? Does anyone have any better ideas for me, short of this lame attempt at public shaming?

I won't even get into the issue of what a PITA it is to port DIDs from them.... :frowning:

I'm very happy to report that my post here found the necessary clue-holders and resolved both the lame DNS and stale email configuration issue.

Also, one important followup wrt the whois for their ASN query:

Finally, as an additional note, the whois delegation for their ASN seems to be broken:

$ whois -h whois.arin.net 17184
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[Redirected to rwhois.cbeyond.net:4321]
[Querying rwhois.cbeyond.net]
[rwhois.cbeyond.net]
%rwhois V-1.5:003eff:00 rwhois.cbeyond.net (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.9.5)
%error 230 No Objects Found
$

It appears that the breakage is probably in my whois client (though, the exact problem has yet to be diagnosed).

The standard whois client for CentOS 5.1 still returns the 230 error:

$ whois -h whois.arin.net AS17184
[Querying whois.arin.net]
[Redirected to rwhois.cbeyond.net:4321]
[Querying rwhois.cbeyond.net]
[rwhois.cbeyond.net]
%rwhois V-1.5:003eff:00 rwhois.cbeyond.net (by Network Solutions, Inc. V-1.5.9.5)
%error 230 No Objects Found

I had one private reply pointing out that my original syntax was wrong in omitting the "AS" string, though I'd tried it every way I could imagine, and verified that the syntax worked for other ASNs.

The whois client on my OS X 10.4 returns the desired results:

$ whois -h whois.arin.net AS17184

OrgName: CBEYOND COMMUNICATIONS, LLC
OrgID: CBEY
Address: 320 Interstate North Parkway
Address: Suite 300
City: Atlanta
StateProv: GA
PostalCode: 30339
Country: US

<snip>

On my ToDo is to dig deeper into the problem and figure out who needs a bug report to fix this. I'm guessing it lies with CentOS/RHEL, and has to do with a failure to use the custom whois port assignment @ Cbeyond.

Thanks for all the private replies, especially the one that lead to this resolution!

Mike