Outbound mail to 1 domain sits in the outbound que - Hard one this!

[Spirit]

I ain't never seen this before!

Heres an over view:

I run; Exchange5.5, OutlookXP, our ISP is WorldCOM. There servers are Lotus Notes.

I send an email to mycustomer.com and they receive the mail, I get the reply and then try to send it again the mail sit in the outbound queue awaiting delivery.

Other addresses at mycustomer.com don't leave the building at all.

I can ping, telnet mycustomer.com mail servers fine. We are not blocked by them, they are not blocked by us, we have reverse IP lookup, they have reverse IP lookup, they're DNS is up to date and correct our DNS is up to date and correct.

Needless to say we have been emailing them for years without issue, we can send and receive to ALL other address's and the address's are spelt correctly. And of course this is our biggest customer it is happening to!

PLEEEEEEASE help.

Thx

Iain

 

[Grenage]

Is their reply address different to their original address ?

 

[Spirit]

Unfortunately not.

I had a string of 5 send and replies to this domain last night and they got everyone of them. Tried to send a new mail and it got stuck in the Outbound queue again. I have never seen anything like it!

Could it be an outlook issue?

Thanks for the help tho'

 

[dacodes]

We experience the exact same problem. I have done some testing and found out that when sending from the exchange client on the exchangeserver (I use this to access the mailboxes with Veritas Backup Exec)it works fine but sending from a client computer using outlook 2000 the mail ends up in the outqueue.

I have tried to use both DNS and forward to my ISP-smtpserver in the IMS, both with the same result.

We use NT4 SP6a, Exchange 5.5 Sp4, ADSL fixed IP with NAT firewall (Netgear FVS318). We collect pop3 mail with a 3:rd party software and send mail with the Exchange server.

I tried to log the smtp activity and to me it seemd like our server talked to the other smtp server, when the other server said OK Go ahead nothing happened.

Tomorrow I will reinstall the TCP-IP protocol, apply SP6a and finally apply SP4 for Exchange once more. I hope this will help. Anyone have any other ideas?

Regards!

 

[rlcos]

Having the EXACT same problem! Using Exchange 5.5 with SP4, running on NT4 SP6. Have one ISP that ALL messages to get stuck. (They host for a couple of different clients of ours.)

My problem first occurred last week on 2/5.03

Here's a piece of interesting info: When I double-click the "stuck" messages in the outbound queue, the "Recipients" box shows this: [354 messageWall: Go ahead].

Did some research, then talked to the net admin at the ISP. Seems "MessageWall" is a spam & anti-virus filter than runs on *nix. (See

http://www.messagewall.net.)

So we looked at it together. According to him, the MessageWall server passes the message through OK, except that it gets one "odd" entry in the log - apparently Exchange is asking to "send multiple", and MessageWall will not allow it to (responds with "no, send individually)".

I have tried reinstalling my Exchange SP, plus all post-hotfixes, and the problem still occurs. I am going to try getting in touch wit the folks that write MessageWall and see if they have any ideas.

If anybody else has any good ideas, please advise!!

[Worst part is, our CEO & founder was the first to experience the problem... and it keeps happening! He is understandably not pleased, nor is the CEO of the company he's trying to send to sicne he keeps getting copies of the same message over and over again.]

 

[Spirit]

If I go into the outbound messages awaiting delivery, and look at the Details, in the Recipients <person@Company.com>[Host Unreachable]. This indecates that we cannot conect to their ISP/Servers but as explained above we can! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!

 

[rlcos]

Spirit, seems as if our problems are similar... yet different. May be a common cause, though...

 

[Rookcr]

Same thing here. Odd that our problem originated roughly the same time. 2/5/03. any other ideas?

 

[Spirit]

I have changed my DNS records recently & IP addresses, the Tech support at the company in question have finally confirmed they sometimes experience this when a sender changes IP address.

It is something in their anti-apm set up that is blocking us.

Once I know you guys will know what it is.

 

[rlcos]

It sure LOOKS like an anti-spam related issue. I know My isue is with the ISP's MessageWall spam/AV filter server... not the e-mail server itself. (The sysadmin gave me an e-mail address to send to that completely bypasses the spam filter as a test, and it went through just fine.)

 

[dacodes]

I think I found the reason to my problem!

I have bought a new broadbandrouter Netgear FVS318 VPN. For some reason this router isn't compatible with the ADSL modem I use (Alcatel Speedtouch). The walkaround for this was to lower the setting &quot;MTU Size&quot; in the Netgear router. Originally this was set to 1500 but when i changed it to 750 the messagequeue was delivered instantly. I had some problems with the IMAP clients and this also solved that problem.

 

[Grenage]

I you are not using a DSL/router combo - I recommend the Vigor 2200USB for the Alcatel Speedtouch, It was designed specifically for it.

 

[rlcos]

Doesn't help me... not using DSL... access is T1 with firewall...

 

[Spirit]

Right after spending half the night on a mobile phone to the US...........

My problem is that when my mail is hitting the company.com servers the internet header is not being recognised so it is not being accepted.

Will post more when I have researched this a bit more...

 

[amoisant]

Might I suggest that you turn Diagnostic logging on for the IMS SMTP services, this will normally give you more information than the information in the IMC Queue.

 

[Spirit]

Thanks Amoisant,

Will do, and will post the results soon.

Iain

 

[monksey]

I get exactly the same and I'm pulling my hair out. It only ever happens to one of our customers domains, but not all of the time. The error I am getting from the undelivered mail is 'network error during host resolution' I know this points to DNS but why should it work sometimes and not others. Please help !!

 

[NHguy]

Same issue here. The originator is usually <>, but there are valid originators as well. Some days they go thru, some days they don't. I just changed a setting in the Exchange Server, and they haven't showed up for a few hours, but I'll be damned if I remember what I changed...........

 

[Spirit]

Success!!!!!! I killed my exchange server, rebuilt it over the weekend and then restored the mailboxes.

Extreme I know but hey it works now!!!!!!!!

Thanks to all who helped!!!!!!!!

Iian