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The Technical Zone... The Geeky forum... Use this forum to discuss technical aspects of email, from authentication protocols to encryption. |
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2 Feb 2017, 02:12 AM | #31 | |
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Quote:
Comcast Requires valid mx records to point to the correct servers when sending and receiving. Where other companies are not as strict about it. So in this case what could be causing the issue is that comcast is trying to deliver but not sure where it needs to be delivered. Last edited by mavas : 2 Feb 2017 at 02:28 AM. |
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2 Feb 2017, 03:12 AM | #32 |
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Actually, mail.freehostia.com is just what they're identifying themselves as in the SMTP banner:
Code:
220 mail.freehostia.com ESMTP Exim 4.86_2 Wed, 01 Feb 2017 19:03:15 +0000 Code:
; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> mail.freehostia.com ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 37973 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;mail.freehostia.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: mail.freehostia.com. 3592 IN CNAME mbox.freehostia.com. mbox.freehostia.com. 1147 IN A 162.210.102.199 Why they have that CNAME there and why their SMTP banner is "mail" rather than "mbox" is obviously a bit odd, but it shouldn't cause anything to break unless the sending server is being seriously picky. The reverse DNS (PTR) record for 162.210.102.199 does correctly resolve to mbox.freehostia.com: Code:
; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> -x 162.210.102.199 ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 38777 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;199.102.210.162.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR ;; ANSWER SECTION: 199.102.210.162.in-addr.arpa. 2838 IN PTR mbox.freehostia.com. |
2 Feb 2017, 03:15 AM | #33 | |
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If that works, then that rules out any possible issues with this legitimately being based on DMARC records or blacklists — not that I buy any of that anyway — as it would be beyond insane for Comcast to refuse to send mail to a server that's on a blacklist while still happily receiving mail from them. That said, if you can get a message through from Freehostia to Comcast, please post the headers here from the received message in your Comcast account, as that might provide some more useful information as to what's going on. |
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2 Feb 2017, 03:27 AM | #34 |
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jholl: Regretfully, my free Freehostia account does not allow the sending of email ...with both SMTP AND with webmail (which is too bad). I'll look up to see if I can pay a one-month fee to upgrade (not a full year) and see if sending works OK.
UPDATE: Well, they want $36 minimum for me to send email and I just can't do it just to send 1 email and all it would prove is Comcast is crazy (not solve the actual problem, if if I understand correctly). Last edited by tony17112acst : 2 Feb 2017 at 03:55 AM. |
2 Feb 2017, 03:39 AM | #35 |
The "e" in e-mail
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If you're talking about the domain anthonytonini.com, I'm confused why you have MX records set for Freehostia if you can't (under your free plan) send via them.
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2 Feb 2017, 04:06 AM | #36 | |
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" * 50Webs offers no support for their free services, and since Comcast said it's not their fault, I decided to change my web and email hosting to Freehostia, * I set up my Freehostia account just ONE WEEK ago, * To my utter amazement, Freehostia was having the exact same problem receiving Comcast emails!!! * After much research, I found they are both part of the same company: Liquidnet, " I also want to point out that you are using a company that supplies no support for using their free service and will not assist with issues you are having. Claiming the sender who makes multi attempts to deliver a message to your domain but fails due to no response from the server does not point 100% at the sender. It is a 2 way street. Comcast is known to have strict sending and receiving policies. Last edited by mavas : 2 Feb 2017 at 04:17 AM. |
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2 Feb 2017, 04:52 AM | #37 | ||||
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Not what I would consider a good solution, but you get what you pay for, and it's pretty rare to find a provider that will let you host your own domain for free in the first place, so I guess some compromises are necessary. At this point, I'm seriously thinking the best option is just to give up and get everything off of Freehostia. The very fact that they've landed on an RBL makes me question their stability and reliability as an e-mail provider (and by the way, they're still getting refreshed on that UCEPROTECTL1 — there was another hit early this morning, which suggests that they've been on that RBL for a while). It wouldn't entirely surprise me to discover that Comcast isn't sending to servers that are blacklisted in this manner, except for the fact that I would expect their support staff to have a clearer indication of this. It's definitely not common for senders to care about blacklists, but it's not out of the question either. There could even be reasons why they might treat this as a transient failure rather than a permanent one, especially with a blacklist like UCEPROTECTL1, which is a temporary blacklist. Again, I still think this is an unlikely scenario for all of these reasons, but it's not an impossible one. Quote:
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Further, considering the state of their DMARC and SPF records, I honestly wouldn't even say that their receiving policies are all that strict, and very few providers have particularly strict sending policies — beyond things like message size limits and anti-virus filtering, which I'm going to assume are not the issue here. Keep in mind that when we talk about "strict sending and receiving policies" we're actually talking about two different things. Like most ISPs, Comcast would definitely have strict policies on what can be sent and received (e.g. maximum message sizes, types of attachments, number of recipients, etc), but as an ISP they really can't have strict policies on where mail is sent to and received from — this is exactly why their DMARC and SPF records are this permissive. The bottom line is that I don't see this as a "policy" issue — if it were, Comcast should be able to identify the problem pretty easily. That said, I agree with the statement that it's not all Comcast's problem.... there is something wrong between Comcast and Freehostia that only seems to affect this specific communication channel, and there's enough odd stuff going on Freehostia (such as being on an RBL) that suggests that their infrastructure isn't exactly up to snuff on their end. IMHO, however, none of this changes the fact that it's up to Comcast to at least provide a definitive answer as to why their systems cannot or will not deliver messages to the domain in question. |
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2 Feb 2017, 05:09 AM | #38 |
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I would like to see more support attempts form freehostia.com as well. When reading the forum and trying to see if my understanding would be of any help. I see nothing being said about what freehostia is doing to try and help other than trying to charge you to find out the cause of the issue.
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2 Feb 2017, 05:17 AM | #39 | |
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mavas: I am impressed that you read this huge, long thread! Thanks for taking the time to help!
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FYI: * 50Webs does not offer any support, but Freehostia DOES - and they have checked their logs/traffic (not 50Webs); * I had tonytonini.com at 50webs and anthonytonini.com parked at Godaddy (forwarded to tonytonini.com); * When 50webs could no longer get emails from Comcast, I switched tonytonini.com ONLY to Freehostia; * When Freehostia was found to have the same Comcast problem, I setup Godaddy's free email for tonytonin.com since they are my registrar; * Godaddy technically hosts tonytonin.com (temporarily) so I can get emails from Comcast till the solution is found; * To continue testing, I pointed anthonytonini.com to Freehostia so mail and web service is with one place with no complications; * For tonytonini.com only, I made an A record at Godaddy to send WWW traffic to Freehostia; but I test with anthonytonini.com. * anthonytonini.com is hosted by Freehostia for mail AND webtraffic as a test to get this solved. Once solved, I will go back to 50Webs. * I changed NO records (MX or otherwise) with Freehostia for anthonytonini.com except the added the SPF and DMARK records to test; Last edited by tony17112acst : 10 Feb 2017 at 12:18 AM. |
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2 Feb 2017, 05:20 AM | #40 | |
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That doesn't mean their analysis isn't correct, but it doesn't paint the full picture — this is what the headers look like to me as well, but there's not enough information to know why Comcast is generating these messages. Freehostia could be helpful by taking a look through their log files and seeing if they're getting any inbound communication attempts from Comcast. Being a smaller provider, it's likely easier to get them to do this than to try and find somebody at Comcast that you'd be allowed to talk to who actually even knows what an outbound SMTP server log looks like, much less where to find them In other words, simply due to the bureaucratic nature of Comcast, you might have more luck getting Freehostia to try and identity any error messages they're seeing on their end — if they're "hanging up" on Comcast, their logs should definitely show why this is happening, |
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2 Feb 2017, 05:27 AM | #41 | ||||||||||
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Here is Freehostia's replies; they respond to everything I asked:
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Last edited by tony17112acst : 2 Feb 2017 at 05:34 AM. |
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2 Feb 2017, 05:27 AM | #42 | |
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Quote:
Not a problem first off I am learning a lot as well by trying to help in ways I can. Just a random question, What happens if you set up an auto forward with keeping a copy on the domain tonytonini.com to auto forward to the anthonytonini.com? If my understanding is correct this might shed some light of what is happening. |
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2 Feb 2017, 05:39 AM | #43 | |
The "e" in e-mail
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Quote:
Not only are there problems with the e-mail - crucial if you're running a business. Also, doing a Google search for, for example "harrisburg pa apartments for rent", is not bringing up any results for Tony's websites. So I would be surprised if Tony is getting many hits to his website, if at all. If I was in Tony's position, I would bale out of Freehostia. |
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2 Feb 2017, 05:41 AM | #44 | |
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None of this is surprising to me, mind you, as from everything I've seen, my best guess right now is that Comcast isn't able to reach Freehostia's servers at all for whatever reason. Unfortunately, the trick is to find somebody at Comcast who knows what they're talking about and has the necessary access to look into the problem for you. Large ISPs like Comcast almost always insulate their actual administrators many levels away from the front-line support people, which is what makes trying to resolve issues like this so challenging. This doesn't mean this isn't Freehostia's problem on some level, however, but as I said earlier, it's still up to Comcast to conclusively identify that. Despite being on page three of this thread, we're not a lot further ahead.... all we know right now is that Comcast is trying to deliver messages to Freehostia, but they can't get through and can't seem to figure out why that is. |
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2 Feb 2017, 05:48 AM | #45 | |
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I suspect the real problem here is either some very strange mail configuration issue at Comcast (e.g. not sending to RBL-listed mail servers), or a much deeper routing problem that affects all communication from Comcast's mail servers to 162.210.102.199 (mbox.freehostia.com) — or more accurately, possibly that entire IP subnet, since the same problem was encountered with 50webs. Tony: When you were on 50webs, what was the MX record you were using for your domain? |
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