AOL\Comcast not accepting email from my domain\exchange 2003

[sxmont]

Hello we recently switched from Speakeasy to Cogent and thus I had to change my Public addresses. Here in lies the problem. AOL, comcast and a few other domains are not accepting my email. I thought it was my PTR record and it still might be.

I have this symantec mail security appliance:
Hostname: mailgw.mydomain.com
IP address: 38.123.130.X1

I checked and confirmed that this the address that easy DNS has as my MX record. So, I contacted Cogent and had them create a PTR record pointing back to mailgw.mydomain.com.

HOWEVER:

I ran the POSTmaster test on AOL and it shows that my connecting IP is: 38.123.130.X2.


Where 38.123.130.X2 = the public IP address of my Exchange 2003 server which resolves to mail.mydomain.com


What am I missing here? Do I need cogent to do something with mail.mydomain.com?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.


- Santo

 

[58sniper]

If the MX record points to x2, and that goes through your Symantec box (inbound), that doesn't mean that OUTBOUND mail takes the same route. If outbound goes out over .x2, have a PTR setup for the x2 address. Or, look into how .x1 is configured. If it's NAT'ed to the Symantec box, you won't be able to have outbound email go out over that if Exchange isn't configured to use the Symantec box as a smarthost.

Make sense?

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.exchangeblogs.com/

 

[sxmont]

Thank you for replying Pat,

The MX record is pointing to X1, mailgw.mydomain.com, which is what is so confusing to me.

I had cogent create two PTR records, one for X1 and one for X2.

And to no avail, I still can't send.

But you did make me check the ETH2 of the symantec box, which appears to be configured for outbound mail and that has a different public IP address, which we will call X3 and that I just found out resolves to mailgw2.mydomain.com


So, it looks as though the symantec device has two ETH ports, one for inbound and one for outbound, each assigned a different public address and a host name mailgw & mailgw2.

I just had Cogent create a PTR Record which points mailgw2.paworkinjury.com to 38.123.130.X3.


What do you think?

 

[58sniper]

Well, what's important is that the IP used for outbound have the correct PTR record, not be blacklisted, and that the banner in your EHLO handshake be valid. If your system connects to a remote system, and during the EHLO command says it is "mail.mydomain.local", or something else that's invalid, that could be reason to block you. Take a look at

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/change-POP3-IMAP4-SMTP-banner-Exchange-2003.html

for info on the 2003 banner.

Make sure you check the blacklists as well to verify you're not listed somewhere.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.exchangeblogs.com/

 

[sxmont]

What is your recommended site to check for blacklisting?

 

[sxmont]

Alright, I got Comcast to work, but of course, I need AOL to work. What gives with this... awful!!!

I guess I have to contact AOL to see what is going on because I am not on any blacklist.

Any input\suggestions?

 

[58sniper]

Have you gone through

http://postmaster.aol.com/

? They usually have quite a bit of helpful info on there.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.exchangeblogs.com/

 

[sxmont]

Yeah, I have been. AOL is awful with this support...

I actually think it is not legal to block without having contact the domain owner first.

 

[58sniper]

It's perfectly legal. An organization has no legal requirement to accept mail from you.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.exchangeblogs.com/