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Old 2 Feb 2017, 06:58 AM   #46
tony17112acst
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There are many posts coming in (which I love!) so I will reply to things as fast as I can:

Quote:
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?
I tried this just now and it got weird: I set the forwarding (or "send a copy function") from tonytonini.com (godaddy hosting) to mail@anthonytonini.com (Freehostia). I didn't get the copy/forward email at anthonytonini.com so I thought I'd set the copy to go to my hotmail.com account just to test that the "forward a copy" function at tonytonini.com was working.

I was careful to put in my Subject line what I was doing and the email forwarded to my hotmail account was received by my anthontonini.com mail!

I'll try it again.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 07:06 AM   #47
jhollington
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tony17112acst View Post
I tried this just now and it got weird: I set the forwarding (or "send a copy function") from tonytonini.com (godaddy hosting) to mail@anthonytonini.com (Freehostia). I didn't get the copy/forward email at anthonytonini.com so I thought I'd set the copy to go to my hotmail.com account just to test that the "forward a copy" function at tonytonini.com was working.
That's somewhat interesting.... With only a couple of minor issues related to anti-spam filtering, forwarding isn't really any different from sending an original message.

What was the "From" address on the original message? Comcast.net?

Are you able to send a normal message from tonitonini.com to anthonytonini.com?

Also, did you check your spam folder at Freehostia to make sure the forwarded message didn't end up there?
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 07:15 AM   #48
tony17112acst
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Quote:
When you were on 50webs, what was the MX record you were using for your domain?
It was mail.50webs.com

I had been using 50webs for like 10 years because of the wealth of free stuff they offer ...and never had a problem. I don't need search results because my apartment webpage is just a place to see photos from my Craigslist ad. Almost everyone knows to go to Craigslist to look for apartments, not do google searches. I'd guess that maybe 1 out of 100 people may do a google search, but I don't need to give up the goodies at 50webs since I have 100% occupancy for 7 years straight now.

50Webs gives for FREE:
* Webhosting for 10 domains!
* 100 email boxes,
* 500 MB of storage
* 1 GB/month bandwidth
...that's incredible for free - I can't find anything like it.

I will leave 50Webs if this is not fixable, or I could stay and just have Godaddy host my email while using 50Webs for the web. I am open to leaving; it's how I found Freehostia - because I intended on switching.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 07:18 AM   #49
tony17112acst
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It looks like forwarding godaddy to anthonytonini.com is working now. I guess this is a comcast to freehostia problem. the forwarding would reveal a godaddy to freehostia, I suppose.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 07:29 AM   #50
mavas
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tony17112acst View Post
It looks like forwarding godaddy to anthonytonini.com is working now. I guess this is a comcast to freehostia problem. the forwarding would reveal a godaddy to freehostia, I suppose.
The point of why I wanted to see if it would forward when sending from comcast to the godaddy that would intern forward the email to freehostia is it still has parts of the comcast headers to make sure that there was no issue with the headers causing a filter or issue of some sort.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 08:09 AM   #51
jhollington
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tony17112acst View Post
It was mail.50webs.com
Okay, just wanted to confirm. FWIW, that one doesn't appear to be on any blacklists, although that doesn't rule out the possibility that it may have been on a blacklist when you were originally having the problem.

I still think it's highly unlikely that this is an RBL problem for the reasons I've already mentioned, but I'm just trying to eliminate even the remotest possibility that it may be that.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 08:14 AM   #52
jhollington
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mavas View Post
The point of why I wanted to see if it would forward when sending from comcast to the godaddy that would intern forward the email to freehostia is it still has parts of the comcast headers to make sure that there was no issue with the headers causing a filter or issue of some sort.
Good thinking, although in this case it's extremely unlikely to be a header problem.

Basically, headers aren't analyzed at the SMTP session level at all — they're just part of the message data stream. Based on what we're seeing here, the message transfer from Comcast isn't getting beyond the SMTP session — the very "best-case" scenario is that Freehostia is "hanging up" on Comcast's mail server, but based on what Freehostia claims it's seeing (or not seeing) in its log files, we're not even getting that far — it sounds much more likely that Comcast either can't get to Freehostia's server or is unwilling to connect to it for some other reason.

If Freehostia was receiving and bouncing the message, then it could quite possibly be the headers, but because the message isn't getting delivered to Freehostia's servers, there's no point at which Freehostia could be analyzing any headers.

Last edited by jhollington : 2 Feb 2017 at 12:09 PM.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 10:48 AM   #53
tony17112acst
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jholl: I was reviewing info and it looks like I missed some of your questions.

Quote:
What was the "From" address on the original message? Comcast.net?
Are you able to send a normal message from tonitonini.com to anthonytonini.com?
Also, did you check your spam folder at Freehostia to make sure the forwarded message didn't end up there?
The "from" is @tonytonini.com, not Comcast.net. I use comcast's SMTP but "From" is tonytonini.com.
No, I can't send from tonytonini.com (Comcast SMTP) to anthonytonini.com (Freehostia)
I did check the spam folder to be sure ...thanks for the reminder.

Also, I got 2 test emails from the Comcast technician today, so it appears they are still working on it.

Last edited by tony17112acst : 2 Feb 2017 at 11:18 AM.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 11:03 PM   #54
jhollington
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tony17112acst View Post
The "from" is @tonytonini.com, not Comcast.net. I use comcast's SMTP but "From" is tonytonini.com. ... I can't send from tonytonini.com (Comcast SMTP) to anthonytonini.com (Freehostia)
Thanks. Just to make sure we're entirely clear, however (and for anybody else reading this part of thread who may want to jump in), I believe you did say you had tested using your Comcast.net address, correct?

Until such time as this is resolved, you should do all of your tests using your Comcast.net address. Don't even bother testing from "tonytonini.com" until you're sure that Comcast.net is working properly, as there are other reasons why Comcast and/or Freehostia may not like to see "tonytonini.com" email being sent from Comcast servers, so let's just keep that one completely out of the equation; there's definitely no reason why messages from your Comcast.net address should fail to be delivered to your Freehostia account.

Quote:
Also, I got 2 test emails from the Comcast technician today, so it appears they are still working on it.
At your Freehostia account? That sounds like a good sign.
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Old 2 Feb 2017, 11:08 PM   #55
jhollington
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Also, while this probably doesn't matter to anything that's going on right now, looking at the SPF record that you set up for anthonytonini.com, it looks like it may be using an incorrect IP address, or in the very least it's one I haven't come across in my research thus far:

Code:
anthonytonini.com.	3533	IN	TXT	"v=spf1 ip4:162.210.102.233 ~all"
Your MX record for anthonytonini.com points to mbox.freehostia.com, which in turn points to 162.210.102.199, so I'm not sure who 162.210.102.233 is; a reverse DNS lookup didn't provide any information, although based on the subnet it's likely on Freehostia's network.

Code:
anthonytonini.com.	1800	IN	MX	10 mbox.freehostia.com.
mbox.freehostia.com.	3600	IN	A	162.210.102.199
Now, all of that said, since you can't send mail from Freehostia, you wouldn't normally list this IP address anyway. Technically, if you were going to use an SPF record at all (and in your case, you probably shouldn't bother), you'd need to list the SMTP servers you normally use to send mail from anthonytonini.com, which I guess would be Comcast's.

None of this should prevent your messages from getting through at all (especially with the "?all" suffix and the policy of "none" in your DMARC record), so this is more just about proper housekeeping, and it's still possible an SPF record like this will result in a higher spam score when your messages are received by other systems.
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Old 3 Feb 2017, 12:01 AM   #56
tony17112acst
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Quote:
Also, I got 2 test emails from the Comcast technician today, so it appears they are still working on it.
Quote:
At your Freehostia account? That sounds like a good sign.
Sorry! I wasn't totally clear; they sent me a message from a gmail account, not a Comcast account.

Also, I am glad you recommended sending from the Comcast webmail I will be using that from now on to avoid other problems.

I was frantically trying to get a DMARK/SPF record up because of what Comcast said. Freehostia's cpanel actually has a menu item called "SPF Manager" and I thought it'd be safer for a novice like me to click on that instead of creating a DNS record myself. And when I clicked on it, it had a field for an IP addresss and I thought I HAD to put one in there ...so I grabbed the IP address form the A record listed in DNS records list from anthonytonini.com. I figured since I never touched the DNS records in anthonytonini.com, the IP must be correct - I didn't understand what I was doing (and am still figuring it out :-)).

So this morning I just removed the IP address from the SPF record and hopefully, I'll research the SPF later - for now, I think it's a valid record, but a lax policy.

So the IP address should be the IP address of the sending server? I'll research it more ...thanks for ALL the great info!
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Old 3 Feb 2017, 12:23 AM   #57
jhollington
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tony17112acst View Post
Sorry! I wasn't totally clear; they sent me a message from a gmail account, not a Comcast account.
Ah, well, the fact that they're going that far is probably a good sign. Clearly they've accepted that they can't send to you from a Comcast account, and they still haven't quite figured out why. This means that this is more of a "head-scratcher" than we can possibly imagine... I'd assume if they're going this far, they must have some more knowledgeable people looking into it.

Quote:
Also, I am glad you recommended sending from the Comcast webmail I will be using that from now on to avoid other problems.
Yes, that's definitely the best route to take. Simplify the scenario down to its basics and avoid conflating it with other potential issues.

Quote:
So this morning I just removed the IP address from the SPF record and hopefully, I'll research the SPF later - for now, I think it's a valid record, but a lax policy.
You probably don't really need an SPF record at all in your case, but if you're going to have one, your best bet would probably just be to mirror Comcast's, since that's the SMTP server you'll be sending through the most often. Further, Comcast's is very lax, as they use "?all" to denote a "neutral" policy — basically saying that the SPF record doesn't say anything at all about whether it should be checked or not.

The easiest way to build an SPF record if you're going to be sending using Comcast's server is to simply put "include:comcast.net" in your SPF record to automatically inherit whatever Comcast has put in their records. I'd go with the following:

Code:
v=spf1 include:comcast.net ?all
Of course, this means anybody at Comcast is allowed to send messages on behalf of your domain, but since one of the main goals of an SPF record is to reduce spam that impersonates you, it's still a good thing — spammers are unlikely to be sending spam through Comcast's servers.

Alternatively, you could just decide that you don't care about what SPF does at all and do something like this:

Code:
v=spf1 +all
In the latter case, you'd have an SPF record in place just in case anybody wants to be picky (again, this really shouldn't be an issue, but it doesn't hurt to have one), but you're declaring that anybody on the planet is allowed to send mail from "anthonytonini.com."

Quote:
So the IP address should be the IP address of the sending server? I'll research it more ...thanks for ALL the great info!
Correct. The purpose of an SPF record is to designate which servers are permitted to sending mail for that domain. If you were actually sending mail from Freehostia, that would be the server to include in there, but since you're not, there's really no point in doing that.

You can read up on the SPF record syntax here.
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Old 3 Feb 2017, 07:37 AM   #58
tony17112acst
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Does anyone think this would reveal anything? Before I ask - know this:

I temporarily have Godaddy hosting one of my domains (tonytonini.com) simply to get email and have an A record pointing to 50Webs to host my website. I could have done the opposite (point name servers to 50Webs, but add an MX record to point to Godaddy for email hosting). But I selected the former because I thought that because Comcast doesn't route email to 50Webs, it may not work.

So would it be tell us anything if I changed my nameservers for tonytonini.com (at my registrar Godaddy) to point to 50Webs and then make an MX record at 50Webs to point to Godaddy? ...then try sending an email form a Comcast account and see what happens?

Or do we know that nothing would happen since DNS/routing is the only thing happening?

I also noticed one thing: When I did a tracert on anthonytonini.com AND tonytonini.com, the last line of the tracert ended with the word "liquidnet" in it; now it's gone. Don't know if that's a clue that something changed or not. I was in IT 20 years ago and I should know this.
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Old 3 Feb 2017, 08:02 AM   #59
jhollington
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It's remotely possible that could be part of it if the issue that Comcast is having is the DNS resolution, which we can't entirely rule out; although I'm not seeing any specific DNS-related problems flagged by the usual testing tools, that doesn't mean that Comcast's mail servers may not be specifically having a problem resolving names from Freehostia's servers. It's one of several possibilities that would explain the symptoms we're seeing, as a DNS/MX record lookup failure usually results in a transient error rather than a permanent one.

However, the problem is the anthonytonini.com domain, not the tonytonini.com one. Unless you're talking about doing a separate test of sending e-mail messages to tonytonini.com, changing the DNS for that isn't going to make a difference at all — in fact that's not even part of the equation right now if you're sending from your Comcast.net address via webmail. I'd recommend leaving it out of the equation just to avoid complicating things further.

If you're able and willing to, however, it might be worth moving your anthonytonini.com DNS hosting over to GoDaddy or another provider and leaving the MX record pointing to mbox.freehostia.com. That would eliminate the possibility of a DNS resolution problem, since we know that e-mails to GoDaddy are getting through without issues.

Quote:
I also noticed one thing: When I did a tracert on anthonytonini.com AND tonytonini.com, the last line of the tracert ended with the word "liquidnet" in it; now it's gone. Don't know if that's a clue that something changed or not. I was in IT 20 years ago and I should know this.
Well, I'm not sure what it looked like before, but really it's the IP address we're concerned about. The "Liquidnet" reference is presumably just the reverse DNS (PTR) lookup of that IP address, which currently doesn't resolve to anything. I don't know if the PTR record got dropped, or the A record for anthonytonini.com changed.

Actually, looking more closely at the PTR queries, reverse lookups for both of those IP addresses are returning NXDOMAIN errors, which suggests that the DNS servers that provide reverse address lookup are down or otherwise broken. This seems like a more recent development, however — possibly only something that's broken today, in fact, as when I did a reverse DNS lookup for Freehostia's MX record yesterday afternoon (as per my post from around 2:12 PM) it was responding just fine, and that one is also returning NXDOMAIN now as well (which makes sense, as it's on the same subnet, and therefore would have the same DNS server).

Code:
; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> ptr 162.210.102.233
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 41532
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;162.210.102.233.		IN	PTR

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
.			86341	IN	SOA	a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2017020202 1800 900 604800 86400

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> ptr 162.210.102.199
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 3362
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;162.210.102.199.		IN	PTR

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
.			86393	IN	SOA	a.root-servers.net. nstld.verisign-grs.com. 2017020202 1800 900 604800 86400

Last edited by jhollington : 3 Feb 2017 at 08:07 AM.
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Old 3 Feb 2017, 08:24 AM   #60
mavas
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So I am currently connected to a comcast network. I found something that is different than what your txt files return.

> set q=txt
> anthonytonini.com
Server: ns01.cable.comcast.com
Address: 69.252.80.80

Non-authoritative answer:
anthonytonini.com text =

"v=spf1 include:comcast.net ?all"

Any Idea why this would be? @jhollington
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