Topic: Mail receipt problem from external domain

[ddougan]

I have a client who has been running SME server for over three years. It's now at 6.0. Business contacts at another organization are having mail timeout problems delivering to my client's box, and are being told by their tech support that the problem is at my client's site, which is running a pretty vanilla 6.0 - no spamfiltering or RBLs, for example. It is running Damien Curtain's secure email contrib.

As this is the only domain that seems to be having a problem, I believe that it's a problem at the sending end, and having investigated, found that their mail server seems to lack a DNS "A" record.

As the sending organization is a large corporation, and my client is small, I want to be sure I have my information correct when I present it to their tech support.

I'd therefore appreciate any pointers that would help me validate my perspective.

Thanks,

Des

[KelvinLee]

Hi Des,

Did anything get logged at all at the SME end when the other company sends e-mails to your client's server ?

Just to share (though a reverse of your problem) -

A client he in OZ running SME (like yours plain vanilla without any addins aside from BitDefender) cannot send e-mails to a software vendor in the US. The mails will stay in SME for a number of days before bouncing to the sender with the qmail message saying it's been in the queue too long and it is giving up. Like you the other company is a substantially larger company and claims to have no issues with anyone else.

I have run tests from other clients who are also running SME servers (and different ISPs) also fairly plain servers without many (if any) addons and none will get through to the software vendors. I upgraded their primary file server to SBS2003 a couple of weeks back and so switched e-mail responsibilities to the Exchange Server in SBS and they can straight away start sending mail to the other company now. I've been getting around the problem in the past by forwarding all mails to the ISP's SMTP server instead of sending mails directly from SME.

I just put it down to "one of those things".

PS. Privacy issues prevents me from posting any of the company names or domains involved.

Kelvin

[ddougan]

Hi Kelvin,

Thanks for your reply. No, nothing is being logged at my client's end.

Des

[KelvinLee]

Hi Des,

I think you will need either access to the other company or atleast get someone there willing to help experiment :-

1) Ping your client's domain from the other company
2) Does tracert from the other company to your client's reveal any clues ?
3) Telnet yourclient's domain.com 25 to see if it responds appropriately

Kelvin

[ddougan]

Thanks - I agree, and I've already done those things from another couple of sites. I'll discuss them when I talk to the other company's support next week.

Des