Exchange 2007 and AOL emails sent

[bsl1973]

I just deployed a Exchnage 2007 and AOL email addresses are sitting in the que and not going out. They come back with several error messages such as :


This message has not yet been delivered. Microsoft Exchange will continue to try delivering the message on your behalf.

Delivery of this message will be attempted until 8/6/2008 1:00:37 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada). Microsoft Exchange will notify you if the message can't be delivered by that time.


They then come back with a error saying:


Diagnostic information for administrators:

Generating server: exchange2007.northernpharmacy.com

ebsc3405@aol.com
#550 4.4.7 QUEUE.Expired; message expired ##

Original message headers:

Received: from exchange2007.northernpharmacy.com ([192.168.1.171]) by
exchange2007.northernpharmacy.com ([192.168.1.171]) with mapi; Tue, 29 Jul
2008 11:46:48 -0400
From: brian Lichtig <blichtig@northernpharmacy.com>
To: "'ebsc3405@aol.com'" <ebsc3405@aol.com>
Disposition-Notification-To: brian Lichtig <blichtig@northernpharmacy.com>
Return-Receipt-To: <blichtig@northernpharmacy.com>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:46:47 -0400
Subject: test from to your Aol
Thread-Topic: test from to your Aol
Thread-Index: AcjxklPVnNwsLzKuQHWP9eimQvnFpw==
Message-ID: <BEFB13462C038048BD1C19F1AE0936FE193F0316AD@exchange2007.northernpharmacy.com>
Accept-Language: en-US
Content-Language: en-US
X-MS-Has-Attach:
X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
acceptlanguage: en-US
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="_000_BEFB13462C038048BD1C19F1AE0936FE193F0316ADexchange2007n_"
MIME-Version: 1.0



We host our own email under the domain northernpharmacy.com and have had all records checked with our DNS provider and internet provider. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[58sniper]

You say all records. Can you elaborate? A couple of things come to mind with AOL. Reverse DNS missing or incorrect; MX records, host name, and/or rDNS are drastically different; incorrect SPF records; you're blacklisted.

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

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[bsl1973]

I am not black listed the mx record is pointed towards our firewall. Here are the results when I test the domain name with the exchange server. The ptr record points towards our firewall and resolves to the correct DNS.


Banner: exchange2007.northernpharmacy.com Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Mon, 4 Aug 2008 18:49:42 -0400 [62 ms]
Connect Time: 0.078 seconds - Good
Transaction Time: 5.406 seconds - Warning
Relay Check: OK - This server is not an open relay.
Rev DNS Check: OK - 63.139.89.78 resolves to exchange2007.northernpharmacy.com
GeoCode Info: Geocoding server is unavailable
Session Transcript:
HELO please-read-policy.mxtoolbox.com
250 exchange2007.northernpharmacy.com Hello [64.20.227.131] [62 ms]
MAIL FROM: <test@mxtoolbox.com>
250 2.1.0 Sender OK [62 ms]
RCPT TO: <test@mxtoolbox.com>
550 5.7.1 Unable to relay [5078 ms]
QUIT
221 2.0.0 Service closing transmission channel [62 ms]

 

[58sniper]

Okay - that jives with what I'm seeing as well.

Have you looked into the SMTP logging to see what the conversation with AOL is doing? My buddy Bharat wrote a great blog entry on SMTP logging:

Exchange Server 2007: Logging SMTP Protocol Activity

http://exchangepedia.com/blog/2007/05/exchange-server-2007-logging-smtp.html

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

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[timmoat]

AOL is very particular that you have reverse DNS set up on your ISP if I remember correctly.

Are you sure this has been done?

A DNS report on your domain name from intodns.com states that there is no reverse DNS address defined.

You usually need to get your ISP to add a reverse entry for you.

 

[timmoat]

intodns.com

I meant

http://www.dnscolos.com

Note: just thought i may not be allowed to enter such links but hey ho - bit late!

 

[58sniper]

reverse DNS entry is correct, based on my testing of his info....

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

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[timmoat]

Random. Turns out we are having problems reaching AOL as well.

All emails are bouncing back with a:

421 Service Not Available Temporary DNS Failure

Emails from AOL are not even reaching our mail server.

Strange thing is that we use email filtering provided by a 3rd party. They have said there are no issues at our end, and that email is working to & from AOL on their other clients that use the same IP ranges.

 

[bsl1973]

I had to call AOL to remove our IP address from there blocked list. They said it could take up to 48 hours and it has been 72 hours so I am calling them back to see what is up. Call the Aol Postmaster in a google lookup. Any other suggestions? It seems to be happening with comcast also.

 

[timmoat]

I've just posted on the exchange 2003 forum; basically we use an SaaS for email filtering (example MimeCast/Messagelabs) so the IP addresses in question and reverse dns entries are working for other domain names. For some reason AOL just does not like our domain name.

I've raised a ticket with the AOL postmaster people whom are rubbish to talk to and don't understand anything when you try to explain!

They have said that the error we are getting which is the 421 Service Not Available is being experienced by many users and engineers are trying to sort it out.

Then again they may have told me that just to shut me up! Taking some heat at my end for a problem we have no control over. Life in IT

 

[jbainbridge]

The best workaround is to create a new connector with the problem domain in the address space. Then set it to use your isp mail server as a smarthost.

I've had trouble will AOL and Gmail; using this method works just fine.

JB.

 

[Zelandakh]

Might be worth making that into an FAQ JB. Someone else might find it useful.