Syntax error during routers help

[billy1234]

I keep getting syntax error msgs when trying to contacting my son at his school. The address has worked before but now it doesnt. The address begins with the & symbol i.e.
&XXxxxx@yyyy.edu.

I have never seen this construction for an address before. Is some system interpreting this as something else while it is being routed to its final destination? Does the use of the & symbol mean something in a specific language? Why should it have worked before and then not work now. I would appreciate any advice or help.

Thanks.

 

[sdeakin]

Hi Billy,

Can I assume that the e-mail address always had the ampersand '&' at the begining? If not have you tried sending an email without it?

Can you give any futher info? i.e. e-mail client you are using actual error message etc.

Scotty

 

[bcastner]

If the & was in the DNS address portion it would not be a legal character (yes, there are exceptions). My guess in the absence of specific error messages as skeakin recommended is that you are being SPAM blocked.

Your ISP has a filter to prevent mail from traversing its mail servers were there are odd characters (or other reasons) for the mail to appear as to or from a suspicioius location.

Call your ISP and as them to send a test message to the same account.

 

[billy1234]

Yes the address has always begun with the & symbol as does all of the student addresses at the school. Apparently all of the students adressess begin with this so at the end of the semeste or year or what have you they can delete/find all the students accounts en masse.

I have tried several varients of the address. Yes the & symbol is part of the address &XXxxxx@etc I just noticed that it wasnt even underlined in my original posting.

I use roadrunner here in south carolina with outlook express(yes I know i shouldnt). My dad in pesacola is also having the same problem. He uses mozilla and thunderbird and bellsouth.

I have talked with the IT person at the college (small college) and she is stumped. I ran a tracert and it blows up midway. I believe she was trying to contact the last place before it blew up. She says that she hasnt had any other reported problems of this nature. Or I think that people have not been as diligent as me and reported it directly to her.

Also the address works internally peer to peer up at school. When I asked my son to email me he did. Inever got anything now get this . . . he didnt even get an error msg!!! So to him it looks like it went through.

Thanks alot for your input. I really appreciate it.